Overly Positive

Lots of people know about social networking’s rising star Twitter. It’s become somewhat of a phenomenon since it got around to getting more prevalent in the last year or so. Twitter’s rise to fame has been so sudden that in one year, the company behind it has been thought to have been worth at least a billion. And it doesn’t seem to be going down anytime soon.

But Twitter isn’t without its share of detractors and haters. I know plenty of people who look at bits of Twitter news and immediately come to the conclusion, somewhat fearfully, that were they to try Twitter they would be bombarded by all means of mindless minutiae, from someone’s bowel movements to a boring 140-character treatise on cleaning dirt from under fingernails. Others simply don’t see the point of a service that further increases the gap between actually talking to a person and using technology to achieve the same thing, at the price of a loss of personal contact. All in all, though there are perhaps millions using Twitter these days, there are plenty of people that just aren’t sold – or worse yet, might even hate those of us who use it.

I get how some of these people feel about Twitter. I mean, I’ve followed people who have met every Twitter stereotype under the sun. When I hear about someone having a hangover in great and disgusting detail, I wonder where some people’s priorities lie when it comes to themselves. There are people like Perez Hilton, for example, who would rather tweet about something terrible that happened to them rather than actually get help for themselves right away. These are the people I immediately unfollow. It’s safe to say that if you want to tweet about the fact that you poked your own eye out with a pen and that you are desperately trying to see, that I’ll probably not be interested.

But Twitter haters should see that Twitter isn’t all about whoring the details of your life. Twitter’s appeal in more practical matters lies in the fact that it’s a real-time marketing tool, able to send coverage of an event instantly, such as breaking news bits. It’s a great way to find others with the same interests by examining trending topics and trading quick messages. It’s an immediate way to get individuals together for outreach causes, such as those who are currently using Twitter for raising funds for charity. Twitter isn’t worth what it is because of the fact that your friends can tell you about how they failed to hit on their 5th person for the night. It’s worth what it is because of the real-time nature of its technology and its practical Swiss Army knife of uses to employ it.

Really, like with any piece of technology, it’s all about how you use it. Trust me on this one – I used to dislike the idea of Twitter, too, until I took a pass at it and used it strictly for keeping up with a few close friends, networking with other websites and people I know in the gaming industry, and working with it to drive traffic, to here and other places. It’s become an invaluable tool in my daily online life, so just like with anything – don’t hate on it til you try it. You might be pleasantly surprised.