Potluck #56 To Tweet or not to Tweet...Twitter

I was not at all familiar with Twitter when I started this exercise, and I am certainly no expert now. Before I went to the website, I thought I would check out some of the peripheral links that were provided from iHCPL, much as I sometimes like to watch previews or special features of movies before I actually watch the main feature. I started with "The Truth About Twitter" which was reporting mostly on the phenomenon of Celebrity Twitter. When I read what the "stars" are tweeting about, I was not particularly impressed.

From there I watched the video clip on Twitter and looked at "10 Traits of Highly Effective Twitter Users" (perhaps some of the celebs should read that as well) and finally went to Twitter.com and clicked on the search feature and explored some of the "trending topics." Again, I found little that was of any value to me even under the swine flu topic. I did a few other searches for topics that were suggested to me like Whole Foods Market, but did not see any useful info.

After I explored the search feature for awhile one of my co-workers mentioned that her husband who is an astronaut used Twitter and had a pretty good following. So I checked that out; it was better since that was a bit more interesting subject, but nothing that I would want to follow on a minute by minute basis.

Another co-worker pointed me to the Celebrity Twitter site and I played with that for awhile. Of the few people I did know on the site, none really were saying much of anything. There seemed to be great interest in what people were having for lunch or what they were watching on the tube. I followed a few celebrities I did not know just to see what they had to say.

The last part of Twitter I explored was the Twitter Elite link. It was (slightly) interesting to see the rankings of the various Twits out of the top 100 ranking. I still do not understand why they are so popular though. Another blogger suggested the Twitter site is for people with short attention spans. Perhaps, but based on the popularity of the site, that must be a pretty large group of people.

I guess I just don't get it. I can see where Twitter could be very useful if you have a reason to use it, but like cell phone calling and texting, most of it seems to be done to fill up empty minutes in our lives. So I will opt out of creating an account until I have something to say or I can find someone with something worth reading on the site.

Apologies From a Luddite.