Comments on General Tsao: Twitter: The New Smoking

Awesome post. Totally how I feel, but I hadn't ta...

2009-04-29T17:50:48.303-07:00

Awesome post. Totally how I feel, but I hadn't taken the time to acutally think it out!

This made me laugh; nice writing. What was it you...

2009-04-03T06:28:26.227-07:00

This made me laugh; nice writing. What was it you commented last time? ::looks up her comment::

"Uh... perhaps we start to discover why i haven't been blogging much lately! No More Words!"

Glad to see you got your words back :)

I have a Twitter account, but rarely post. The rea...

2009-04-02T16:29:57.930-07:00

I have a Twitter account, but rarely post. The reasons are the ones you listed, mainly--there is thought in a well written blog, and there is (hopefully) evidence of an articulate mind. Twitter is like someone running up to a TV camera, shouting, then running away while someone else runs up. Interesting maybe the first time, but not so much the second. Or the millionth.

People tweeting about bodily functions? Yep. Seen 'em. And what people are having for dinner, and what they just drank, and what the weather's doing, and why oh dear God why won't anymore people follow me really I'm interesting truly I am...

Remember the old days before the internet? What th...

2009-03-27T02:28:27.859-07:00

Remember the old days before the internet? What the hell did we do all that time? I remember this rectangular shaped things with words in them. Some smelled kinda good.

In some sense I fear this may be what news blogs a...

2009-03-25T20:28:35.479-07:00

In some sense I fear this may be what news blogs are going to be reduced to in coming years. It's completely possible to convey the gist of an entire article in 140 characters.

For example, http://twitter.com/themediaisdying

At first glance one might see these posts as unreasonably short, but the majority of them effectively convey the meat of their links.

How many people even bother reading entire articles these days? I would wager people mostly read the first couple paragraphs (if that) and move on.

Hmmm, does someone who reports primarily via tweets still count as a journalist? Perhaps not yet, but someday...

I'm going to avoid using this crap for as long as I can, but as with cell phones and Myspace, I see myself having to cave eventually.

Here's to progress! =(

Twitter can be quite useful, if you do it with a p...

2009-03-21T21:11:19.884-07:00

Twitter can be quite useful, if you do it with a purpose. Purposeless twittering is what leads to shittering.

It's useful for loosely connected groups of people that actually have useful communication to do-- a bunch of solo developers (there's useful iphone dev twittering), conference-goers (sxsw twittering was somewhat useful if you filtered enough), and so on.

Twitter.com is really not very useful. You need something like TweetDeck to get some usefulness. There's probably a lot more iterating left before Twitter's really useful, and doesn't just get spammed to death.

It's the absence of thoughtful posts like this I'l...

2009-03-20T06:47:54.724-07:00

It's the absence of thoughtful posts like this I'll miss when twitter nation takes us all over.

Or maybe I won't, I'll be too busy reading tweets.

What's the next derivative going to be? Are we go...

2009-03-19T09:50:45.987-07:00

What's the next derivative going to be? Are we going to regress back to the digital/virtual equivalent of grunts and cave paintings, updating with just emoticons every few minutes?

Facebook is the new addiction for me. I had it for...

2009-03-16T15:13:06.082-07:00

Facebook is the new addiction for me. I had it for a long time already, but now I have more friends who actually use it it has become quite the source of lost Internet hours.

The funny thing is I probably use face book more the way other people use twitter. But the 140 symbol count is just not enough for me. I need space to be witty darn it.. Even if I'm the only one who thinks it's funny ha.

I had a twitter after the fallout with 1up and EGM...

2009-03-16T05:31:20.166-07:00

I had a twitter after the fallout with 1up and EGM. A few weeks I had to delete my account. I didn't have any real life friends using twitter yet, so I was basically watching ex-Ziffers talking amongst themselves. I dropped a few well wishes and good lucks to feel like I was taking part of the twitter fad, but in a short few days it really started to feel like I was stalking them. It was creeping me out.

I'm a fan of the work your whole gang does, but I don't need to know about the burrito from that great taco stand down on 4th street, and how someone paid for it later that night.

I'll stick with Facebook and my 1up blog for now. Even with Facebook I felt the need to scale back my online presence. I was getting friend invites from bullies and other people I didn't like in high school. Extremely awkward to have someone that treated you poorly growing up now wants to be your friend on a website.

I love facebook, but I needed to change everything to Friends Only. A Friend of a friend isn't always someone I like or trust.

It kind of just exploded onto the mainstream scene...

2009-03-15T20:42:29.583-07:00

It kind of just exploded onto the mainstream scene. It's like everyone has a twitter now, but you control what you share with others which is always good. Also, you can always block the people starving for attention (ex. the underaged, the spammers, and the creepy peeps). You have to sift through the oddballs to get to the worthwhile.

I liked your double derivative idea, and I can see where you're coming from. It's like a mini facebook/blog application, but as you stated: "it's a hell of a lot healthier than smoking"

We'll see how long it lasts, maybe it's a fad, maybe it isn't. Thanks for the read.