I have had a twitter account for
a few years now and rarely used it. So the past of couple weeks while working
on the class assignment I really gave it a second chance. I began following people
and companies that I already check updates from on a daily basis. I am a true
news junkie so naturally CNN, The New York Times and other news titans ended up
in my tweeter page feed as well as a few celebrities and personal friends. I
even used Twitter categories feature to find things of interest outside of the
usual comfort zone.
Days have passed by and once
again I found myself barely ever checking my Twitter page. I simply kept
following my usual routine of getting information some place else. I had to try
and identify the reasons why I could not force myself to use Twitter. The
answer has surprised me. The core of Twitter business model – 140 character
status updates – did not work for me. I simply found the messages annoying, too
short, and too difficult to digest. Most
of the tweets had lots of attachments like hash tags, hyperlinks, etc. So when
something would catch my eye I was required to decode the short message and
eventually go to external pages to get the full story. For example:
The message itself gave me very
limited information regarding what was behind the link. You can discover the
content by clicking at it which takes you to NBC’s website. As a user I had no
idea of knowing what the tweet actually means before leaving the Twitter
website.
Another example of Twitter being
too small for it’s own content is the fact that you cannot post pictures
without using an external application.
So a tweet like the one above has
no meaning without Instagram app that actually hosts the image.
The more I thought about all the
disadvantages of Twitter the more I kept coming back to the same thought: “It’s
just not Facebook.” Tweets just can’t compare to longer, more readable Facebook
posts that allow users to view the content (pictures, videos, full articles)
right there and then.
After comparing the content I get
from the same people and companies on Facebook vs. Twitter I was surprised to
find out that it doesn’t always match. This contradicted my initial
understanding that liking someone on FB and following the same person on
Twitter would result in duplicate posts. However, I found the content posted on
Facebook to be more meaningful.
Besides failing to find value in
tweets content there was another destructing component – the speed with which
those tweets kept appearing on my screen. Because it takes very little time and
effort to write a tweet, those short messages just kept piling up at the top of
my feed. Very quickly I’ve experienced information overload to say the least.
And then it hit me – Twitter unfortunately is the face of American culture. In
the nation where 8% of children 3-17 years of age get diagnosed with Attention
Deficit Disorder, Twitter is just a reflection of what we have become. Our
overfed and over stimulated minds can no longer consume information in full
paragraphs. This would require time that we no longer have or are able to
devote to quality. Instead, we gorge ourselves on quantity – 140 character
half-sentences flashing at the speed of light.
I am sure small businesses and
large corporations that advertise on Twitter are over the moon since they are
able to appear on customer screens using very little effort. We cannot blame
them. As consumers we have made it too easy to sell us things, influence our
opinions, tell us what to think. By letting 140-character tweets run our life
we are giving up something very valuable – our character.
By no means am I social media
snob and want to kill Twitter at its root. However, I cannot help but feel less
intelligent after consuming tons of information via Twitter. Call
me old-fashioned, but I will most likely stick to reading full-size articles in
newspapers, view whole picture albums of my friends on Facebook, and
obsessively check news online. After all CNN.com is only a click away in my
browser bookmarks.
