Today when I got home from work, I was rather bored while surfing the internet, and ended up at this dark corner of the internet called Twitter. Being a curious beast, I decided that I would look into it, and registered myself an account. And low and behold, this is what I got…
This is the almighty twitter?! I have to say I’m not at all impressed. The layout of the site is awful, the fonts are completely wrong, not so much the fonts themselves, but the size of them. The page has about two useful pages: your page, and the other persons.
The search facility too is absolutely awful. A friend of mine is currently developing a social networking site dedicated to backpackers, and I know this site (www.travelee.com for anyone that is interested) has a Twitter account for updating us on its development progress. So I searched high and low for the account through the search facility, and couldn’t find it! What’s the point of being able to search if the search doesn’t yield any results?!
And then there’s the 140 character word limit. What’s the point? You could just sign up for a (just as free) Blogger/WordPress account and have a real blogging tool, or if all you want to do is let people know what time you’re going out, use Facebook status updates. Twitter seems to try to fit into a hole that has already been filled by several different tools.
… and yet, there’s something about it that makes me think that there’s more to it than the (frankly awful) interface of the site. Twitter isn’t designed as a blogging service like Blogger or WordPress, nor is it touted to be “social networking” along the lines of Facebook. It is a tool for those that have neither the time nor the inclination to write blog articles, and unlike Facebook it lets anyone view your “micro-blogs”. It allows the full-timetable masses to blog on the internet, and to follow the thoughts of others, whilst retaining their precious minutes and seconds.
Twitter gives me the opportunity, using 140 characters, to express my moments of complete genius (and the opposite) without the hassle of publishing blog entries like this. It also lets me view the genius moments of other people. Stephen Fry, Arnold Schwarzernegger and many other celebrities, heads of state, and general awesomes all contribute to twitter because its a fast, easy, and hip way to get in touch with the unwashed masses in a single sweep; and that is why twitter wins. Its not the external beauty, it’s what it allows people to do quickly, that makes it great. Its not about sharing your daily chores (I went to work today too, big freaking whoop), its about sharing those brief shining moments of brilliance with people before they are forever lost.
Oh, and if you’re interested, I can be found at: http://www.twitter.com/KarlNicoll
