Comments on: Twitter taking off in Harrisonburg

By: hburgnews.com » Is Twitter Mainstream?

hburgnews.com » Is Twitter Mainstream? — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:33:06 +0000

[...] in early March of last year (and added the hashtag eight months later). Since last fall, it’s spread like weeds. Now the DNR, TV3, DNR reporters, area attorneys, politicians, and businesses are using [...]

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By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:47:06 +0000

An interesting twitter experiment:

The Tweet to Beat: Paying $3 Per Twitter Follower
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/03/09/tweet-to-beat/

“The gist: To benefit U.S. public school students, I will bribe the entire world to follow me on Twitter for $3 each.”

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By: Barkley Rosser

Barkley Rosser — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:17:26 +0000

Having brought up those annoying people in airports who go around loudly spouting their inane nonsense into no-hands cell phones, I must note one virtue of twitter — twittering is silent, none of this taking over public spaces with one’s personal tripe.

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By: Renee

Renee — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:14:14 +0000

Brent, I know what you mean. It’s a similar feeling to realizing I left my cell phone at home – feeling out of touch with normally instant communication.

But when I’m missing all of that stuff for an out of town work meeting or something like that, I don’t feel worried about it as much as I just look forward to relaxing and catching up on blog reading, etc. at the end of a busy day.

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By: Brent Finnegan

Brent Finnegan — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 12:47:24 +0000

Every few weeks or so, if I’m so busy with other things that I don’t check Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, or Google Reader for a day, I get short, mild “panic attacks” (for lack of a better term) where I feel like I’m hopelessly behind. When in reality, I’m only several hours behind, and I haven’t really missed much anyway.

I’m sure some reporters feel the same way if they take a few days off, and they’re behind on the most recent developments in the news.

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By: Renee

Renee — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 02:24:18 +0000

Yeah, I know what you mean about being overloaded, Barb. I don’t have MySpace or Facebook – and that is one major reason. Twitter just fits well with my online “presence”.

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By: Barb

Barb — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:51:09 +0000

All these posts, and still on topic!

I don’t use Twitter. I have both MySpace and Facebook accounts which I seldom access. Most of the time I feel maxed out with information. I’m cutting back on my ‘net time, because when all is said and done, what exactly do I have to show for it? Twitter, for me, would be just more unedited info cluttering up my limited brain…

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By: Justin

Justin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:32:17 +0000

I feel like MySpace and Facebook had people all a “twitter” a long time ago. But Twitter saw the importance of status updates and made a service just about that.

I feel like any way you apply Twitter, you could equally apply to Facebook, a blog’s RSS feed, Myspace, a newsgroup… The people you need to check it and use it need to be all using the same site.

For instance, if everyone added Comcast as a Facebook friend, everyone would see their updates, everyone would see people they know posting to or commenting on Comcast’s page, etc.

Maybe I’ll adopt Twitter as my sole way of communicating to Hburgnews people. Facebook is for friends. My blog is for family. Sure there are lots of lines crossed in between.

Twitter is no more an innovation that Facebook or Myspace in my opinion. It’s another blogging service for content that isn’t worth a full blog. And when people post links and pictures in Twitter, I wonder why they don’t post it on their rss feed.

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By: Renee

Renee — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 05:58:40 +0000

“twitter is the poormans email” – um, email is free (and twitter is not meant to replace email)

“Its like a blog with none of the functionality of commenting, threads and RSS and like email, but you’re not able to do have half the stuff email can do either.” – I blog, use RSS, and email, and still use Twitter, too. It doesn’t have the functionality of any of those 3 because it is not trying to compete with those. It has its place in the array of online tools available to us right now.

“It’s like a blog for people who are too dumb or lazy to make.” – Many of the people on Twitter ARE bloggers (including people on this thread), so that doesn’t make any sense.

I also have to disagree that Twitter is a fad. It does need some functional improvements, but overall, it’s too useful to die out just yet. You could label sites like MySpace as fads, but look at the slew of other sites its popularity inspired (including, I think, Facebook). Facebook is now copying Twitter’s functionality, and using it in a smart way for Facebookers, I think. – Imitation is the best flattery, right?

OK, I’m done Twitter-evangelizing for now. Honestly, sit down with someone that really uses it and see how useful it is. I think it filled an important niche, and what other online service fits so well with SMS?

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