I picked up a well written, if not quite cynical piece from Richard Glover in the Sydney Morning Herald about this new “twitter fad”.
His subject was “You could bring back the hula hoop if you found a way of connecting it to the net ”
In the piece, Richard suggests
“Twitter is a social networking site that allows you to answer (in 140 characters or fewer) the question: “What are you doing now?” Yesterday no one had heard of Twitter. Today half the world has signed on with Twitter. Tomorrow Twitter will be dead. Has anyone else noticed how fast we’re getting through our fads?
I hate giving advice to young people but when I was your age we’d make a good fad last at least six months. We got a whole year of fun out of totem tennis. We spun 10 months out of the yo-yo. Even speed reading lasted four months – which is pretty remarkable when you consider how quickly we got through the manual.
I’m as fad-hungry as the next spiritually empty materialist but the speed of uptake has become ridiculous. People hear there’s a new e-fad and realise with horror they are not part of it. Their face dissolves into something akin to The Scream by Edvard Munch. “Oh my God. I think I’m dying. Quick. How do I log on?”
And later
“Watching television news for nothing? Oh, how boring. Watching the same television news on your mobile phone, while sitting on the bus and being charged per second for the privilege? “Ohhh, ohhh, don’t stop, this is so amazing.” You could bring back the hula hoop if you found a way of connecting it to the net and a phone.”
I was a cynical as Richard back in 2007 when I first heard about twitter – then got the bug in 2008 and have not looked back. I’ve gained REAL friends, business contacts, and even business leading to revenue via twitter. Yes, I’m a strong believer in twitter and I am using it to its full potential.
Have a read of Richard’s article – let’s look at it again in September (+ 6 months) then March 2009 (+12 months) to see if he was right or not. As always, follow me on twitter as @andrewgrill and also subscribe to my RSS feed.