Why Twitter Doesn't Suck

A few years ago, I'd put up a post about how much I disliked Twitter. For those of you who won't read it, which I'm assuming is most of you, especially now that I'm giving you this shortcut, these were my main reasons for the anti-Twitter rampage:

• It was difficult to use and also sort of pointless.
• It showed me lots of random posts by people doing mundane stuff. 
• It didn't allow for adequate expression due to the character limit, which in turn resulted in people tweeting multiple times an hour, which again leads to my previous point. 
• Every time I replied to someone, it showed up as a new tweet.

After trying it out for a while, I decided it wasn't for me and simply stopped using it.

Then, over these summer holidays, I watched Heroes for the first time (yes, I'm many years behind on lots of TV shows. I only just started watching Buffy recently, after finishing Heroes). I loved the show and wanted to find out where else I could see Milo Ventimiglia and Zachary Quinto. I figured I could also follow them on facebook, but Milo doesn't seem to have a facebook page (although there is a fan page with at least a couple of creepily obsessive fans).

After a few moments of perplexity over what to do next, I remembered this little thing called Twitter, and it turned out that he was on it. So I decided to give the site another chance, and I'm glad I did.

Ventimiglia tweets often enough to keep things interesting but not so much that it gets annoying.
Also, get this: he actually replies! Especially when he's on a flight, apparently. There was this one time he was my entire news feed because he was replying to tweets for about 5 hours straight. Not that any of his followers were complaining, I'm sure. I mean, seriously, replying to so many people instead of taking a nap or something - how very nice of him!


Stephen Amell and Neil Gaiman also use Twitter

We all know Neil Gaiman's got a wonderful way with words. His tweets are funny and entertaining, and since he's Gaiman, even when you see promotional tweets, you're not thinking "Oh god, stop!" Instead, you're probably thanking him for gracing you with information like where you can get signed copies of his books and so on.

Stephen Amell is someone I started following on facebook after watching Arrow, and while I didn't expect him to be exactly like the character he plays, I was pleasantly surprised to discover how funny he is. Recently, I saw that he posts more often on Twitter. One more reason for me to not give up on this site.


The 140 character limit is actually rather fun

Of all the annoying traits Twitter possesses, this one was initially at the top of my list. However, with all the precis writing in school and flash fiction in college, I decided I was more than capable of turning it into a sort of challenge.

Oh wait, to Barney, the challenge would have been to use more than 140 characters. Hmm, I really didn't think that one through. Ah, whatever. Those pictures are staying right there.

This reminds me of how funny NPH's first few tweets were. Before he understood the character limit, sentences would just stop abruptly, often mid-word, if I remember right. I'd like to put up screenshots, but there's no way I'm scrolling to the very beginning of his page (especially with my aggravatingly slow internet).

Coming back to what I was saying before the NPH distraction, I swore to always use exactly 140 characters to make the most of every post. Even if I really didn't need to. I discovered it was fun and not so hard to do. Also, when I'd done it the first few times, no one seemed to care, and for a while I'd slipped into using fewer characters than I could (gasp!)
But then I reminded myself that no one really cares what you do on twitter most of the time unless you're famous, and that there was one person who cared about sticking it to the character limit: me.

I've learnt that a 140 character tweet is called a twoosh. And that's the last time I'm using that word because it sounds incredibly stupid. Way stupider than "tweet".


Quick scrolling

Since there's a character limit, even though people tweet often, posts are really short. This means you can quickly scroll down without wasting time on uninteresting things. I don't follow too many people, so a few seconds of scrolling shows me the entire day's new tweets.


#Hashtags

Some hashtags are pretty crazy, and it's a lot of fun to see the different wacky things people have to say about them. #foodafilm and #dressamovie were a couple I really liked. Okay, they were the only ones I bothered to look at, but the point is, they were fun.
That being said, some people really need to stop using hashtags with every other word. Unless it's in a parody like the one with Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake:

  #funnyvideo #LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

So, those are all the reasons why, although my problems with Twitter haven't disappeared and are still quite valid, I've reversed my general opinion of the site. I rather like it now.

Also, did I mention that Milo Ventimiglia uses Twitter and replies to lots of messages?

Why I Dislike Twitter (or Why Twitter Sucks)

Google+ seems to be making lots of people extremely excited! I'm just wondering how it'll work out after Google Wave died a natural death. I'm not wishing it won't work well; I'm just a little skeptical.

However, with regard to social networking sites, the one thing that I still find completely incredible is the popularity of Twitter. Really, what does it do? It's like a facebook (thanks to the logo, I always end up spelling it without a capital "F") where you can't do much except update your status message, once every hour if you're a compulsive, er, Tweeter, and about once a month if you're like me.

I agreed to give it a shot because some of my best friends gnawed at my brains until I did told me to, and I thought, why not? I was told I would get used to it, but that hasn't happened so far, and I don't think it ever will. There are several things about that site which annoy me no end, but I'll stick with just a few main things.

Character limit: 140
Why? If you don't have much to say, you won't say much, whatever the limit may be. And if someone does have a lot to say, isn't it better to let one say it in one message instead of four consecutive messages? (Oh, so sorry, I meant tweets. Meh.)
For some strange reason, when I do tweet (I still cringe at that word being used in this context) I always have exactly 140 characters, but I don't think anyone cares.

Too many irrelevant "tweets"
Like I mentioned earlier, small character limit = more tweets. And so you open up your home page and keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep scrolling down until you realize it's not worth it. There's nothing there to see. Come back next month.
Of course, this also makes anything your tweet less important, so what do you do? Tweet some more. Vicious cycle, see?

Time for an example:

 

Had to have separate pictures because when I made it one long picture (like the actual webpage you have to scroll down) it took FOREVER to load, and refused to be a readable size.

I don't like Twitter, Twitter makes life hard for me. Fair enough, I suppose.

Anyway, getting back to the point, like I said, blah blah blah... and where is my beloved Markus Feehily? Shame! (Because he’s the one and only reason I’m still on Twitter)

By the way, this is how it is when I’m following just 12 people, which, as many of you would realize, is really, really low by Twitter standards. I don’t see everything those 12 people write, so how do you see what the 100-1000-[insert number] people are saying? Oh wait, you don’t. Do you even care? I guess not.

I wonder how long it’ll be before people turn to something else, but until then, for whatever inscrutable reason, Twitter works for a lot of people (or that’s what they claim), so if they’re satisfied with the pointlessness, who am I to complain, right? I’ll just stay away and visit about once a month, as usual. I can’t promise that I won’t write similar posts, though. 

PS - Hey Twitter, you're welcome for all the free publicity.