Can someone explain the appeal of Twitter to me?

[Lester C.]

After months I finally broke down and clicked on Gail Simone's twitter page. I got a headache trying to read every backward and for the life of me don't get it. Explain what I'm missing.

[Personamanx]

Warren Ellis.

[NickT]

It doesn't have one appeal, you can use it in multiple ways. If it's not your thing I'm not going to be able to explain it because it's not your thing

[Spiffy]

Twitter is a big bag of yuck for the most part. It does have a few practical uses, but its bogged down by an ocean of misuse and a whole mountain range of garbage.

Probably the one good defense of it is that its relatively easy to ignore the uses of it you don't like.

[Lester C.]

It doesn't have one appeal, you can use it in multiple ways. If it's not your thing I'm not going to be able to explain it because it's not your thing

I want to just ignore it, but Twitter been credit for all the revolutions in the Middle East as well as saving countless Japanese lives so it's hard for me to dismiss it. I WANT to get it I really do, but again I got a headace.

[Ravenwing263]

Twitter is a big bag of yuck for the most part. It does have a few practical uses, but its bogged down by an ocean of misuse and a whole mountain range of garbage.

Probably the one good defense of it is that its relatively easy to ignore the uses of it you don't like.

So, it's just like the internet?

[t.c.johnson]

Twitter is wonderful and amazing and will bring you enlightenment and peace.


Full disclosure: twitter runs in my company's servers and is responsible for my bonus last year.

But I am not biased

[Basque]

I think of Twitter as a giant chat room. If you're really interested in it, the first thing you have to do is get a dedicated client for it (like TweetDeck), which will make it much more user-friendly than the website. Second, it's no fun unless you're following a lot of people and enough people follow you back to get involved in discussion.

I know some people think of it as "micro-blogging." Others just use to post incredibly inane and pointless "updates" on what they're up to at every moment of the day. But for me the interest lies in conversations and discussions. I follow 300 people, about 90% of which are comic books writers, artists, publishers and bloggers. So there's a lot of discussion that happens between these people, which are often very interesting to read. It's a bit frustrating though if you're looking for a way in, because most of these people don't have any reason to follow you back, so even if you try to participate in the conversation, you might not always get an answer. But if you have your own network of people who follow you and like to participate, then it doesn't matter.

I had the same reaction when I first looked at it. Trying to make sense of conversations where you only have one side of it and reading it all backwards was really frustrating. But if you check it often enough, then you can sort of follow it in real time and it's a lot more interesting that way. (Though also very time consuming.) You can also create lists (or groups) of people, which make it easier to follow some of the conversations.

[Gail Simone]

If you try to track every conversation backwards, that would be a huge headache. There are apps that show conversations in order, that works for me. Otherwise, I like it just
to respond in a stupid way to stupid stuff.

[leafinsectman]

I like it just to respond in a stupid way to stupid stuff.

They should use this as their company slogan