Twitter

I recently decided to investigate more about Twitter and create an account and see what all the fuss is about. And frankly, I'm not too impressed.
I believe Twitter started due to the growing idea of being a prosumer,a once consumer now wanting to be involved in producing material. They usually want to become involved because they feel like they have something to say or just the fact that they want other people to know what they are doing, that they exist in some form.
On Twitter, there is a small box near the top of the page which beside it asks the question, "What are you doing?". You then have 140 characters to write about, well whatever your doing.
Just like blogging you can follow other people's Tweets or messages they post. I chose to follow people like CNN, The New York Times, and President Obama. These Twitterers post tiny url links to articles that I find interesting and are more accessible than picking up the paper and carrying it around with me all day to classes. I can just go online and get the headlines and choose which to read more about. President Obama's Tweets are updated often about when he will speaking and on what topic or have url's so i can watch a video of the speech he gave. I think this is his way of making sure people are up to date on what is going on.
Many people however use it to post things like "going water skiing this weekend!" While that is truly fascinating and you may never have known your third cousin twice removed water skiers i beg the question of, who cares?! I am interested in what is going on in my friend's lives but I don't need to know when they are working, or at home watching TV with their cats or that they just broke up with their boyfriend of a week and they are devastated. I think instead of asking "What are you doing?" Twitter should ask "What is on your mind?" Asking that question leads to a more philosophical answer.
A recent tweet by The New York Times was all about the new dog the Obama family were getting my tweet that day was, "Why is it so important what type of dog the President owns? I just don't get it!" This tweet actually offers others to respond with their own comments on the topic, no one did cause I'm following about 5 people, but they could have. And with only 140 characters available to write it makes Twitter a mini-blog site where all you can really do is tweet about a topic and place a tiny url in it so that they can read the entire blog. It is very difficult to get out a lot of information in such few characters.
Some research I found suggests that not being able to write as much helps people to tighten their writing so that they cut the fluff out and just leave the facts. Which is great if your a writer for a newspaper where your stories need to be tight and fit a certain length. But for just twittering about your trip to new york I could see people writing more and it still being interesting. I have seen people twitter who purposly missspell words just so they can fit into the limit. "i h8 ppl who wrt lke ths."
Twitter has started to gain more of a fan base because many celebrities have started using twitter such as Brittney spears and Ashton Kutcher. In recent news Ashton realized he only had about 50 thousand less followers than CNN who was trying to reach 1 million. So he created the Twitter challenge asking everyone to start following him so he could beat CNN. Larry King replied to him saying "we will defeat you." Here are the links to the videos posted by both of them.
Ashton's Challenge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QRyNWLZZmo
Larry King reply: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDLLTSjPu-w