I'm fairly certain the original LiveJournal client only supported one line entries. Who knew that removing features would lead to a popular new web service in the crazy Web 2.0 era? :P

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I'm not sure I understand the point of service cross-posting, other than more ways to call attention to yourself. If I friend someone, say a fellow alum, I don't think I want to see the same one-liner in their Facebook status, their LJ, their Twitter, their IM away message, etc. Is that what you're wondering about?

That said, I'm still new to using Twitter, so maybe I'm not yet a new media douchebag. Apparently I'm supposed to call them "Twitterati"?

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For me, twitter feels like IRC (an ancient chat protocol). Slower of course, but with the ability to only "listen" to the folks you care to.

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I mentioned this before.

http://www.retina.net/tech/why-twitter-works.html

Bring back IRC, -please-.

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#4 AGREED.

I have deliberately quit following people on Twitter only to have them start dumping digests of their daily twitters on Livejournal. I cannot escape.

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Speaking hypothetically (because I don't quite get it either), in re: point #1, it is not particularly easy to have my phone tell me when you (and only you) have updated your lj? Maybe? But I have a caveman phone, so this may not apply to you kids today with your palms and your crackberries and your newfangled newtons.

(for the record, I don't actually follow you on my phone, just my girlfriend. Because I am way more an obsessive fanboy for her than for you.)

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Icon love.

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#4: YES. I know folks who have stopped this because of the public censure. If I wanted to be on Twitter, I would be on Twitter with all the other twits.

I firmly believe that the purpose of Twitter is to rack up messaging charges for the cell carriers.

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Naw, that's what 3jam does. They take one inbound SMS message and push it out to all your friends.

Oh wait. Twitter beat them to the exact same thing. Ooops.

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I think the only person who is actually authorized to use Twitter is Jenny Holzer. Everyone else is violating the terms of service.

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yeah, my g/f does a similar thing wherein she primarily uses it to throw out quotes that she particularly likes at that moment. I agree that that seems to be the best use of it so far.

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I think my main complaint about twitter has to do with #4. I've seen a few of my LJ friends, who used to write thoughtful LJ posts, turn to merely syndicating their twitter messages (I believe you called these "twits" instead of "tweets" during one conversation). I don't mind one-liners, and I don't mind more or less contentless posts, but to have them aggregated in one place without any cohesion or continuance of normal posting is deeply irritating.

I don't really use IM very often, and a few of the twitter people I follow don't use LJ, so it's moderately useful to me, in the way that any pointless diversion can be useful.

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"I've seen a few of my LJ friends, who used to write thoughtful LJ posts, turn to merely syndicating their twitter messages"

This is my number 1 problem with Twitter. It steals a bunch of the content from LJ! My boyfriend, a big twitterer, almost never posts on LJ any more, instead just opting to tweet regularly throughout the day. Makes me sad. I miss his real posts. And I feel like I'm missing a bunch of interesting content, because I'm not willing to keep up by having all my friends' tweets SMSed to my phone or wade through my twitter friendslist several times a day & try to untangle all the one-line conversations. Come back to LJ, people! Come back!

Edited at 2008-04-22 03:53 am (UTC)

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I deleted my Twitter account last week because it's for the 2 second attention span crowd. While it might be handy for some bots, it's nothing that I can't do, just as easy, with AIM or Jabber.

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Before I try out any new piece of web2.0, I like to know of a clear case of the software
getting someone laid. The problem with twitter is I can't figure out how it is going to
get anyone laid, much less me.

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I have even lower standards than that. I'd use it if it failed to get me laid, but merely made it easier to get my existing friends to have lunch with me.

I should register iHungr.com.

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I still don't understand how Twitter is in any way superior to posting one-liners to Livejournal.

Because I don't want to have to read everyone's goddamn Livejournal. It would be great if people would only post one-liners, sure. But most people post essays on things I don't care about.

The big feature of Twitter is not for the senders, it's for the recipients -- it forces messages to be under 140 characters. Can't say it in 140 characters? That's a hint about whether I need to hear it.

That, to me, is what Twitter offers over LJ.

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P.S.: I don't actually use my cellphone with Twitter. Maybe that was their intended use case, but I find it way too verbose for that. I get it through IM, where I find the volume of messages tolerably low.

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#4, I totally agree with. I'm about to start dropping people because all I see is their twitter dumps, and they are even less interesting than their journals.

The only real use for Twitter I've ever personally found was back when I did cons (of the anime/whatever variety). It's really useful to have what works out to SMS broadcast with your other friends who are at said con; you can send a quick "I'm at [panel x] in [room y]" or "I'm at this party" and it makes coordinating and communication a lot easier.

Since I stopped doing those, I've left the service turned off.

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I fail to see how anyone can actually love twitter given that the site is broken roughly one day out of every week. Maybe it's a devious plan to torture people who have nothing better to do but sit and click reload.

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You could say that about every popular web app ever created.

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After reading all the above replies, my lack of knowledge about Twitter other than having seen it mentioned twice in as many days leads me to believe I am either way less internet cool than I thought I was, or I don't have enough friends.
However, I seem to win for losing on this one.

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Funny thing is, I seem to get more replies when I post my Twitter feeds than I do from the infrequent LJ posts I put up. So as long as the phenomenon continues, I suppose I'll keep posting them.

Fortunately, you don't follow my LJ anyway, so you are spared this.

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I still don't quite understand twitter. I've been trying, but it just strikes me as lazy... I don't CARE what you're having for breakfast, people, and as you say, posting a stack of your one liners doesn't substitute for real content.

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Twitter wins because it sets the expectations correctly. When I see a new LJ entry that's essentially worthless crap, I'm let down.

When I see a new Twitter update in my stream, I don't expect much. When it turns out to be a funny link, or a useful update from a friend I'm stalkin--er, trying to make plans with--etc., then I'm strangely pleased.

Happiness is all about low expectations.

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THAT IS ALL.

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No, it's exactly like a private IRC channel that's +m. This shit was old in 1997, come on.

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You would think that twitter could manage to format journal posts in a fashion that is vaguely readable. But it just completely sucks.

I skip anyone who feels the need to post in this fashion, it annoys me greatly.

If you wouldn't have posted the one liner before, perhaps it's still just not worth my time. Besides you're generally verbose in amusing ways.

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Thanks for this post. I've had this exact discussion with about 5 other people just this week, so it's nice to be able to simply send out this url for my thoughts on Twitter.

To reiterate what everyone else said above: Web 1.0 got me laid repeatedly. All Web 2.0 does for me is let me play Scrabble at work.

Edited at 2008-04-22 06:24 am (UTC)

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Of course, you're 10 years older than you were during web 1.0. But that probably has nothing to do with your lack of getting laid.

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Twitter posts on LJ are massively annoying, particularly when they are apparently half of a conversation with someone else. Was the text messaging technology proving insufficient somehow, that I need to see your "LOL you're so right!!!" and "Thanks, me too!" twieets posted every day?

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This is precisely my problem with the twitter dumps.

If people were Tweeting, "I <3 Cinnamon rolls" and "Aww, Charlize in accounting got flowers!" I could understand what was going on in the twitter feed, and it would just be a bunch of nearly worthless garbage, but at least sensible, and about the person's life.

But the half-a-conversation is ridiculous. Even if you are similarly LJ-reading the other half of the conversation, does anybody want to take the time to match them up by timestamp and decode the conversation?

I think maybe a 90% solution on the twitter-to-lj-dump would be filtering out any message starting @ because it's not actually regarding the twitterer.

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Twitter is web2.5, and is likely to run out of money faster than web1.0

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Somehow it's less depressing when no one responds to your twitters than when no one responds to your LJ posts.

And hey, wilw responded to me the other day, which puts Twitter up one in fanboy points.

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Twitter is like an IRC channel, except reduced to the channel topic.

Technically it’s no different from posting one-liners to LJ, except that LJ’s interface suggests writing a paragraph or two and titling it. In contrast, you cannot post anything more than one-liners on Twitter – but the update form right is right at the top of on your friends page. So people use it differently. UI shapes use – you know this.

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I ignored Twitter when it first went public, because it seemed silly. Then lots and lots of people started using it, and then I wrote a review which can be summarized as "...really? _This_ is what we're using the internet for these days?"

Then a few months later, I discovered that lots and lots of my friends had started posting on it, and then it became useful and desirable. The Twitter feed is like office chatter, for good and for bad. Sometimes you pick up useful info, sometimes you pick up a tidbit that makes you want to have an actual conversation, sometimes it's just yap yap yap yap...but here, abandon the analogy and are grateful for the ability to un-follow someone.

So I was forced to write a new review. The bottom line is that Twitter makes no sense, until it suddenly makes complete sense.

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