Twitter: Cyber Carnival or Trendy Tweet?
I have just read that over 40% of people joining Twitter give up the practice within a few months, possibly due to ‘tweet lag’ and that many ‘serious’ people still regard the site as at best a frivolous extension of texting to a wider audience. Although I myself have only being engaged in tweeting for a few weeks, I decided nevertheless to review my time spent on the web in an attempt to provide a kind of cost benefit analysis of my experience to date. However, I must admit that this decision was partly brought about my ‘good wife’ (not to be confused with the lovely lady fronting to the TV series who simply pouts with dramatic affect when faces with any serious problem but yet again----). She arrived home from work the other day and looking over my shoulder at the my twitter site , asked in the most patronising of voices if I had found any new ‘friends’. I quickly assured her that tweeting was not a search for friends but a site where hordes of ‘followers’ and ‘following’ intermingled in an invigorating and mentally stimulating way by sending rapid fire messages across cyberspace. However, as I reviewed the long list of cryptic tweets populating my twitter page with ever-increasing degrees of banality, I must admit that my previously held fervour began to waver somewhat. Hence, I decided to embark on the aforementioned review process, and in so doing try to ensure that I too would not suffer from a ‘tweet’ tooth in the near future.
For the uninitiated, the basic twitter process involves the sending of simple messages, no longer than 140 words, to other people who you have identified as belonging to the twitter community. These latter people are grouped into ‘followers’ and ‘following’ depending of course whether they are pursuing you or you them. Many people provide a useful ‘bio’ of their background skills or interests to help streamline your searches. However, some are so extensive and multidimensional that they would make even a ‘Michelangelo’ type person blush with envy and hence, ‘bio’ proclamations of funky divas with accentuated skills in people management, yoga, earth sciences, global warming, jazz appreciation and a love of children should be taken with a degree of scepticism normally reserved for utterances made by participants at events such as the Miss World pageant.
However, the potential limitation on the tweeting process is not chiefly related to the senders of messages but rather to the intrinsic limitations of the messages themselves. Most seem directed at what people seem to believe to be ‘famous’ celebrities in the belief that the senders will somehow share in their celebrity status if they are made indirectly aware of their humble existence. Still more are used as a non to subtle means of advertising their skills by referring their own web sites.
But all this would be no more debilitating or energy sapping than watching an episode of American Idol or the X Factor, if it were not for the content of many of the messages themselves.
Some of the more ‘sophisticated’ bloggers include informative attachments to articles/news updates/videos which have tickled their fancy while scouring the web. These take the form of a ‘treasure hunt’ where some clues as to the content are usually provided but you must explore the attached references to gain a full insight into the proffered information. This process can prove very entertaining with time and patience. However, the majority of tweets contain no such nuggets of fact or fiction but encompass a litany of cryptic comments from the perspective of the sender only which bear all the insights of comic banalities more at home in a Woody Allen film dialogue. An example might be as follows:
‘@ gooblegook""3 I see you have changed your Hair’
@blandy''' No I really like it, Green is the new Blue’
Erudite perhaps but enlightening? And most tweets are worse!!
Perhaps another way of addressing the limitations of the message process is to add a blog such as my own at http://myplanarc.blogspot.com/ where one can ruminate further on life’s trials and tribulations and share it with others at the click of a ‘mouse’ or the flick on an ‘i-phone’ page.
So, after all this is twitter worth the effort? On balance, I genuinely think that it is, for this reason, it all comes down to perception. You see I think that the twitter process is like taking part in a giant carnival in cyber space. While of course, there are many kinds of carnivals, as for example in the Mardi Gras in Brazil or Notting Hill in London, it is the Venice Carnivals in Italy which I feel provide the best analogy here. This is because they are essentially ‘masked’ balls and it is the very mask of anonymity that gives ‘tweeting’ its essential ingredient. You see you can potentially contact anyone anywhere in the World and offer your views fair or frantic, frivolous or fractious, without any fear or favour. It lends a whole new level of excitement and anticipation to a communication process open to all and at a time of depressing economic stagnation, where many people like myself, have unwanted ‘time on their hands’, it provides an opportunity to talk to the World. Sometimes, I feel like the scientists at Los Alamos, in New Mexico with my ‘twitter’ telescope trained at Mars. But it is only when I open my twitter site and blog in the morning that I can gauge whether there is any cyber life out there.
I have just read that over 40% of people joining Twitter give up the practice within a few months, possibly due to ‘tweet lag’ and that many ‘serious’ people still regard the site as at best a frivolous extension of texting to a wider audience. Although I myself have only being engaged in tweeting for a few weeks, I decided nevertheless to review my time spent on the web in an attempt to provide a kind of cost benefit analysis of my experience to date. However, I must admit that this decision was partly brought about my ‘good wife’ (not to be confused with the lovely lady fronting to the TV series who simply pouts with dramatic affect when faces with any serious problem but yet again----). She arrived home from work the other day and looking over my shoulder at the my twitter site , asked in the most patronising of voices if I had found any new ‘friends’. I quickly assured her that tweeting was not a search for friends but a site where hordes of ‘followers’ and ‘following’ intermingled in an invigorating and mentally stimulating way by sending rapid fire messages across cyberspace. However, as I reviewed the long list of cryptic tweets populating my twitter page with ever-increasing degrees of banality, I must admit that my previously held fervour began to waver somewhat. Hence, I decided to embark on the aforementioned review process, and in so doing try to ensure that I too would not suffer from a ‘tweet’ tooth in the near future.
For the uninitiated, the basic twitter process involves the sending of simple messages, no longer than 140 words, to other people who you have identified as belonging to the twitter community. These latter people are grouped into ‘followers’ and ‘following’ depending of course whether they are pursuing you or you them. Many people provide a useful ‘bio’ of their background skills or interests to help streamline your searches. However, some are so extensive and multidimensional that they would make even a ‘Michelangelo’ type person blush with envy and hence, ‘bio’ proclamations of funky divas with accentuated skills in people management, yoga, earth sciences, global warming, jazz appreciation and a love of children should be taken with a degree of scepticism normally reserved for utterances made by participants at events such as the Miss World pageant.
However, the potential limitation on the tweeting process is not chiefly related to the senders of messages but rather to the intrinsic limitations of the messages themselves. Most seem directed at what people seem to believe to be ‘famous’ celebrities in the belief that the senders will somehow share in their celebrity status if they are made indirectly aware of their humble existence. Still more are used as a non to subtle means of advertising their skills by referring their own web sites.
But all this would be no more debilitating or energy sapping than watching an episode of American Idol or the X Factor, if it were not for the content of many of the messages themselves.
Some of the more ‘sophisticated’ bloggers include informative attachments to articles/news updates/videos which have tickled their fancy while scouring the web. These take the form of a ‘treasure hunt’ where some clues as to the content are usually provided but you must explore the attached references to gain a full insight into the proffered information. This process can prove very entertaining with time and patience. However, the majority of tweets contain no such nuggets of fact or fiction but encompass a litany of cryptic comments from the perspective of the sender only which bear all the insights of comic banalities more at home in a Woody Allen film dialogue. An example might be as follows:
‘@ gooblegook""3 I see you have changed your Hair’
@blandy''' No I really like it, Green is the new Blue’
Erudite perhaps but enlightening? And most tweets are worse!!
Perhaps another way of addressing the limitations of the message process is to add a blog such as my own at http://myplanarc.blogspot.com/ where one can ruminate further on life’s trials and tribulations and share it with others at the click of a ‘mouse’ or the flick on an ‘i-phone’ page.
So, after all this is twitter worth the effort? On balance, I genuinely think that it is, for this reason, it all comes down to perception. You see I think that the twitter process is like taking part in a giant carnival in cyber space. While of course, there are many kinds of carnivals, as for example in the Mardi Gras in Brazil or Notting Hill in London, it is the Venice Carnivals in Italy which I feel provide the best analogy here. This is because they are essentially ‘masked’ balls and it is the very mask of anonymity that gives ‘tweeting’ its essential ingredient. You see you can potentially contact anyone anywhere in the World and offer your views fair or frantic, frivolous or fractious, without any fear or favour. It lends a whole new level of excitement and anticipation to a communication process open to all and at a time of depressing economic stagnation, where many people like myself, have unwanted ‘time on their hands’, it provides an opportunity to talk to the World. Sometimes, I feel like the scientists at Los Alamos, in New Mexico with my ‘twitter’ telescope trained at Mars. But it is only when I open my twitter site and blog in the morning that I can gauge whether there is any cyber life out there.
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