thoughts on twitter

Since I was very involved in creating my library's CHPLearning program, our version of Learning 2.0, I haven't actually been following along like everyone else. We are at the end now, and I thought I'd share some of my impressions of the tools we've explored.

Twitter is odd, there's no doubt. I came across a recent blog post on ZDNet that seems fairly accurate to me: The four stages of the average Twitter user. According to the author, "There’s a strange phenomenon that happens almost every time someone joins Twitter. They hate it. At least at first." He calls the first stage "confusion and indignation." He goes on to say, "But many of the people who once hated Twitter — or at least, didn’t quite get it in the beginning — are now many of its most active users and raving fans."

I think I'm at stage three. I see the usefulness and enjoy looking at Twitter, but I still have trouble remembering to tweet. I think Twitter is in the process of becoming something much bigger than it already is, and I like watching it evolve. It is like nothing else.

In reading co-workers' posts about Twitter, I noticed a disturbing trend. I admit that Twitter is odd. I agree that it is not unusual for folks to hate it at first. However, I don't understand why people would hate it without ever having tried it. I saw a couple of posts today in which people made fun of Twitter because they think people are actually tweeting the answer to the question "what are you doing right now?" This tells me the people who wrote those posts have never bothered to look at Twitter or read much about it. Because, even though that may have been the stated purpose initially, people are doing so much more than answering that question.

To be fair, many co-workers learned about Twitter and wrote that they could understand how it might be useful for others, or even for the library, but that they personally weren't interested in it. That seems fair. But the knee-jerk response to dismiss something without really understanding it puzzles me.