I'm a fan of privacy so I don't understand the draw of twitter beyond the original purpose of broadcasting a message to a known list of people. Perhaps even 1-way followers if you add in celebrity types as tweet sources.
I guess the tipping point is the 'tweet back' feature. At its worst it seems like a narcissistic 'I want to have public conversations with another individual.'
If twitter id's were all anonymous I suppose it's no worse than a forum like this except that the content is most likely far more personal and far less technically valuable. I use HN to keep up on the latest technology and to some extent business trends.
One example use case I saw recently in my circle of friends: person A tweets "wow, there's a great special on sashimi bowl at the place near the university", person B tweets back "@a hey, I'll be in the area Friday, how about we go for lunch? anyone else interested?", person C (common friend) sees the conversation and tweets "@a @b hey, I'll go too". Finally a group outing is quickly organized.
Mostly I see it used for quick conversations, funny remarks, organizing small events, saying when you're going for a trip...
An example: DJB posted something about why crit-bit trees are superior to hashes, I replied asking about cache-issues with crit-bit trees and he responded back with information about how to make crit-bit trees cache aware.
That is a very useful public conversation to have; indeed 20 years ago it could have happened on usenet.
I guess the tipping point is the 'tweet back' feature. At its worst it seems like a narcissistic 'I want to have public conversations with another individual.'
If twitter id's were all anonymous I suppose it's no worse than a forum like this except that the content is most likely far more personal and far less technically valuable. I use HN to keep up on the latest technology and to some extent business trends.
Why do people like twitter?