leaving a comment on valleywag

*twitters*

This exact article (word for word) could have been published five years ago when blogging was still an extremely niche activity.

How ironic then that the medium that was previously deemed to be equally as useless is used to voice opinions about the uselessness of twitter.

Just give it time; it'll mature.

By the way, I'm very much aware that the author of this article could have had all of that in mind when he hit "publish"!

thank you, thank you, thank you.

True, the same was written about blogging, and it holds true for certain types of blogs, millions of them, today. But even with blogs, even at the very beginning there were people coming up with interesting, enlightening, and engaging content. Where is the breakout, content-wise, from twitter? I don't doubt it will come, but even at its best, what will it be?

oh, and for extra irony points, have a glance at http://www.twitterholic.com/

You'll notice that a large proportion of twitter's top twits (I refuse to call them twitterers) are pioneers in the field of blogging that happen to be contributing a lot of the inane banter that this article alludes to!

p.s. check out my twitter, lolz

http://twitter.com/Coneee

Dear Twitter Haters:

I don't want to hear every negative remark that pops into your mind about Twitter. Just figured out reason number 6,541 why Twitter is a waste of time? Keep it to yourselves. Just visited the latest Twitter mash-up only to get annoyed? So what. If you and your drunk-ass friends at the bar just had a riotous half-hour conversation about all the dorks who were at home Twittering while you were out enjoying your life, don't waste your collective breath telling everyone in some lame open letter. Just tune out the stuff you don't happen to like.

And finally, since you're obviously feeling all "holier-than-thou" with your superior intellect, let me just take a moment to remind you that you took time to post a witty retort to a bunch of "self-obsessed nerds." Who's the REAL loser here?

Thank you. Now piss off.

@Sally Tenpenny: Sally, the difference here is that twitter is directly about people. People are much harder to "brand" than malleable blogs based on standard html.

Honestly, there are a ton of things that I can imagine using the medium for.

Poetry immediately springs to mind. Collaborative story writing (via SMS, that could be seriously cool). Link blogging. Collaborative work (keep a traveling group in touch and sharing ideas). Locating people inside buildings (instead of sending a text to a dozen friends, send one text).

This is just off the top of my head. But yeah, I think the whole platform needs to improve before this really takes off: it needs video/audio integration, maps integration, better ways of presenting the information, the ability to base a twitter on a brand rather than just on a person. The sky is the limit.

I'm still very skeptical that it'll all happen, but I wouldn't be the first person to get excited about twitter...

Actually, the very first bloggers were a pretty interesting bunch. Jim Romenesko, Dave Winer, Jason Kottke. Romenesko never wrote about himself. Kottke sparingly. And Winer at least mixed in serious commentary with the personal trivia.

@dknighton: dude, don't get touchy about it. Frankly, twitter IS a complete waste of fucking time at the moment. The point is that it won't always be like that.

@Nick Denton: Nick, sure. I accept that there were a few innovators in the original field of blogging (Peter over at Gizmodo could be added to that list too!) that had interesting things to say.

That said, if you look at the body that took a critical look at blogging when it first appeared (mainstream newspapers, mainly); their commentary on blogging was that it was full of self obsessed nerds writing about what they ate for breakfast. Even if this was not in fact true (the newspapers just couldn't distinguish between the innovators and the detritus).

I just find it fascinating (and deliciously ironic) that a blog is aiming the same kind of criticism at twitter when there are obvious avenues for innovation in writing here: even if none have been discovered yet.

At the momemnt, mainsteam newspapers are to blogging what blogs are to twitter.

It's neat to look at what people are doing around the world at this very instant: http://twittermap.com/twittervision