This part sums it all up for me:

When I asked the Twitter community what would you say to someone who says ‘I just don’t get Twitter’, one of the best answers was “You don’t have to … you’re not the target audience”.

Thanks!

Twitter is in some ways a bizarre contradiction. Essentially it offers a way of blogging regularly but without taking the time to write a full post (this is the main way I use it). So thumbs up for saving time. But, because everyone is doing just that, it can quickly turn into a torrent of pretty meaningless snippets. Losing you the time you’ve just gained.

So far I’ve unfollowed people at a pretty steady rate. Not because they are not interesting (I’m sure they are) but because they tweet so often that they drown out the other people who I do want to hear from. I’m also now using Tweetdeck to help manage the inflow (and filter out the ones I only want to check up on when I’ve got little else to do) – which is yet another app I need to check up on.

At the moment, the main topic of conversation on Twitter seems to be Twitter itself – it’s the bright shiny new thing now that blogs are getting a little old. There is also the gold-rush of people trying to build a name for themselves and get on the myriad of top 50 lists. This will pass.

After that, who knows? Personally, I think it will become a way of sharing links (a kind of instant delicious) and feeding blog posts. Other than that it will offer a way to check up on the celebs and notables who are on there.

Of course, it’s altogether possible that I don’t get it either. We’ll see.

By calling me a Twuddite you are implying that I am rebelling against something that is actually changing my way of life right now. But Twitter just isn’t doing that, if I ignore Twitter, nothing will change, my life will continue as normal. Billions of people are continuing with their lives without ever coming into contact with Twitter.

It is one of the ironies of social networks (real or digital) that they often adopt exclusionary language and bullying tactics to keep their knowledge safe and to maintain their overblown opinions of themselves, even though this behaviour is detrimental to the growth of the social network that they are espousing the virtues of.

Cheers Mike

As the person who started this by telling people ‘I just don’t get Twitter’ I thought I would share my thoughts, having now spent a month or so trying to understand what it is all about. So here it is…

Twitter has potential, but it currently offers me, personally, nothing of value.

Or perhaps more correctly, the value/effort equation is not in my favour. The effort required to find people that you want to follow is massive and very confusing and actually in the end I don’t think I have found anyone I truly find useful, no one to follow that I think has added anything of true value to my life. If you want to follow people who are all enamoured with Twitter and want to tell you how great it is, you will swamped for choice. If you want to follow people the ueber geeks discussing which other technology will change the world then again you are probably in luck. Try to find a network that is discussing something else and you are out of luck. As far as I can tell there are just no tools in existence that allow you to find those people, it assumes that you will find them via your existing network, but for me that has just not proven to be the case.

Yes I am following Steven Fry and have been amused and intrigued by his comments, however I can’t help feeling I would enjoy it more if it was just package up into a nice weekly email and sent to my inbox on Monday morning.

People keep telling me to get more involved, to Tweet more. Perhaps if I had found the right network of interesting people I might, but currently the only thing that I find myself wanting to Tweet about are petty fanboy arguments about which technology is best. Arguments that in my opinion are best left to the school playground.

My specific responses to the reasons you give:

- Building informal relationships with a global community, at great speed and zero expense

Zero financial expense, but massive expense in time. Perhaps with the introduction of better search tools this cost will be reduced, until then…

- Feedback on new products

Feedback without any trust relationship is useless. If I want real feedback on products I will visit the sources I trust and get my info from them.

- Following news as it happens and before the newsfeeds have had a chance to publish anything

I have yet to experience this happening. I am not following many people, so that is probably why, however I would rather get my news 10 minutes latter rather than having to follow 10,000 people, just in case.

- Access to high profile individuals (remember, you can follow ‘anyone’)

Finding these people is still a problem, and remember, just because they are ‘high profile’ doesn’t automatically make their Tweets worth reading.

- “I get my news from BBC World’s Tweets, 24/7”

I get it from from the BBC 24/7 as well. It’s called TV or Radio or their website. Why do me need yet another stream to listen to?

- Being contacted, without requesting, by the customer service department of a company, when someone was having real problems with a product (see “100 days of Twitter”)

I am really torn as to whether I think that is fantastic customer service or the worst case of subversive marketing I have heard of. I do think that if you where running a company then Twitter could provide a really useful tool allowing you to communicate with your customers, but I don’t, yet.

- “It’s the water cooler, it’s the people you turn to, it’s the parish pump, it’s the pub, it’s the club, it’s just always there.”

It’s the school playground, where everyone pools into cliques and tries to shout the loudest about how their opinion is best.

So all in all not the bet review, however I will keep following and occasionally Tweeting and will report back if I change my mind.

Cheers Mike