“Twitter is useless.”
“Twitter is for telling people what you had for lunch.”
“Twitter is too noisy. I can’t make sense of it.”
Why should the world care if we’re not even sure Twitter has made a profit. It limits users to messages shorter than 140 characters (including spaces) and has a language of it’s own? Twitter is dismissed for the same reason that it is powerful; it’s brief and specific. How much can you really say in 140 characters anyway? Apparently in Egypt you can say enough on Twitter to attempt to topple your current government. Twitter has become a lifeline in a country where the internet in Egypt has been effectively turned off. Twitter messages can be sent via mobile phones though so they’ve become a powerful organizational tool in the fight for liberty.
So is Twitter useless? Yes, in the same way that a phonebook, a knife and a pen are useless if you never touch them. Twitter is a communication tool and for many people an essential one. The number of users on Twitter is less than half of Facebook users but active users are also usually influential consumers and public figures. It’s been said by many people that Facebook is for people you do know and Twitter is for people you want to know.
Twitter is useless, unless you use it.
