Hi, Geoff? Just because you’re bad at Twitter doesn’t mean that Twitter itself sucks. Just saying.
Twitter is only bewildering and unmanageable and dumb if you can’t figure out how to apply your filter — either figuratively or literally using specific applications.
(An aside: How tedious to have to keep explaining this kind of thing to people as they throw their hands up and proclaim that the technology is beyond their grasp. Or — worse yet — too trifling to be worthy of their attention.)
Yeah, there’s crap on Twitter. Just like there’s crap on TV or in theaters or on the radio or in the newspaper. There’s crap everywhere. But people with big-boy and big-girl brains figure out how to get what they need from these media without collapsing into a crumpled ball of whine.
I can tell you that there have been at least a dozen times in the past few months that I have been at work when something has popped up in my Twitter feed that has led to either a story or a brief for the metro desk or a major heads-up for the people monitoring the wires for late-breaking news.
And that’s just the stuff that I catch. I’m sure I miss a ton, too. Which is why I think it’s important for reporters to use this new technology as part of their routine. It’s no different than monitoring a police scanner, which mostly dispatches crap. (Often hilarious crap, at that.)
So sure, pile on if you don’t get the potential of Twitter. It’s hip to hate Twitter, I get it. (It’s also kind of tired to hate on Twitter, isn’t it?) But for reporters and people who need to be as plugged in to the community as possible — especially now that there are less reporters covering a larger area than ever before — it’s criminally negligent to turn your nose up at a technology that can essentially bring community news to you in a split second. Just because you find some of it annoying.
Related reading. HT: Rebecca
My comment on the CA site:
“What, Calkins discovered that the twitter feeds of most of the sports figures and celebrities he worships are vapid and self-absorbed, and that jocks might not be scintillating conversationalists? Well, this IS news!”
Geoff is a hack. Let’s be realistic. He’ll write whole columns in which he poses a Q&A with himself. The whole ‘what’s the point of twitter’ thing is just another example of his lazy and unimaginative thinking. He doesn’t have to like twitter. Who gives a shit if he does? He felt we all just HAD to know how HE felt about twitter. God knows we couldn’t live without that. The high point of his career is being screamed at and having his pen snatched by White Chocolate.
In the end, its not him but his readers who are the poorer for it. We as the news/info consuming public are looking for more that 400 half-hearted and poorly conceived words slabbed up on dead tree. We want to be able to interact and learn more if the subject(s) interest us. Geoff just wants to get access, try to be witty (which he fails MISERABLY at), grab a check and head home. He’s above all of us who actually consume his crappy work. God knows, he wouldn’t want to get his hands dirty with the unwashed.