Has Twitter jumped the shark? Maybe. Does it matter? No.

by phil on Friday Feb 27, 2009 4:49 PM
mainfeed, the rotten tomatoes thing

From the Daily Beast: Twitter Jumped the Shark This Week

It's not a business--and now that Rep. Joe Barton is doing it, it's not even hip anymore. It's time to Twitter the f%$k up.

These kind of reactions to Twitter are funny to me. It's the same song. Before it was blogs, before that it was Internet itself, and before that it was cell phones. Look, you don't have to use Twitter if you don't want to. You don't have to use facebook, gmail, myspace, yapper, etc.

I use Twitter. I tweet maybe 2-4 times a day, check it every 30 minutes. A couple months ago, I spent a lot of time on Google Reader. 12 months ago, I spent hours on MySpace. I barely use my facebook anymore because it's too cluttered. My MySpace is in decay right now. I've been blogging on Movable Type for about 5 years now. I just sent my mom an email with a YouTube in it. My mom bought a $1,200 really small notebook computer that I saw over Christmas. I said, "hey, you got a netbook!" She replied, "what's that?" A month later, I bought myself a $300 netbook. My mom bought an iPhone because she thought it was cool. She used it for 4 months, and then went back to her BlackBerry.

Do people waste time on Twitter? Yes. But people waste time on a lot of things. And people do a lot of productive things with technology too. I think it's important to be neither hung up or hyped up about technology. I'm reminded of this quote from the Creative Whack Pack:

One of my favorite ways to sell an idea or a product is to emphasize not the product itself, but rather "the product of the product."

By selling the "product of the product," you put the idea in a context the potential buyer understands and desires. A classic example of this is Charles Revson, one of the founders of Revlon.

At a party a lady asked Revson what his product was. He replied:

"My dear lady, on the factory floors, our product is cosmetics, but in the department stores, our product is hope."

What is the "product of your product"?

In other words, I don't think it's good to be pro-this or anti-that with regard to new technology. Think of things you want to do (i.e. connect with your kids, meet new people, kill time), and figure out the best way to do it. Be tool-agnostic.

Comments

Sarah Q Browning said on February 27, 2009 7:14 PM:

Amen, brother. And this explains why I don't see your shares on Reader much anymore. Reader is still my #1 fave.

Sarah Q Browning said on February 27, 2009 7:16 PM:

P.S. This ties in well to my post yesterday showing an example of the usefulness of Twitter: http://www.sarahqb.com/2009/02/score-1-for-twitter.html

Squidhelmet said on February 27, 2009 9:48 PM:

Preach it! I totally agree. I hate when people rail on a medium. It's just a delivery system! People are always pronouncing new art forms dead or declaring that a scene is over. It's worse than labeling things. People just label things just so they can declare them dead.

Hater: What's this?
Player: Punk Rock.
Hater: Oh. Punk Rock is dead! What's this?
Player: Second Wave Punk Rock.
Hater: Oh. Second Wave Punk Rock is dead!