Grazing Rites

So for the first time Twitter’s monthly traffic has surpassed that of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times websites. In December Twitter had 5 million pageviews, last month they had 20 million. Although I think it’s worth pointing out Twitter now has plenty of spambots as well as actual people who think they can make money off this thing that artificially inflate those numbers.

It CAN be a tool of business but not a business unto itself for the users. For example I get updates on Rock Band  DLC that, like this week with Duran Duran’s Rio and Girls On Film, I’ll happily pay to download. Twitter can supplement your business, not be your business.

So what’s the appeal of tracking the minutea of people’s lives 140 characters at a time? Well if you’re following people with banal updates like “Ate a sandwich, yum” or “Watching People’s Court” then you’re following the wrong damned people. Start by following Wil Wheaton, this guy makes the ordinary hilarious - his arguments with iTunes and his dog are often the least funny things he tweets about and even those are chuckle-worthy.

Twitter is for the witty and fans of wit. Afterall what’s a tweet but a one-liner?

There’s also something to be said for being concise. After my 2,500+ word review of Star Trek for example you’d probably welcome 140 character plithy observations.

It’s also a way to share links and see what the world’s talking about via trending topics.

This entry was posted on May 17, 2009 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.