It Seems As Though We're All Weighing-In On The Twitter Phenomenon, So...

...this is what I wrote regarding Twitter on my friend Marsha's blog-site (http://blogomarsh.blogspot.com), with a few minor adjustments:

What you say about the practicality of Twitter's 140 character limit is interesting, Marsha, because I tend to have the opposite reaction to it--I tend to think that such a limit encourages the production of overly-general, rather arbitrary nonsense. It seems to promote insubstantial thinking.

Take, for example, the president's recent "State of the Union Address." During this event, certain congresspeople were twitting (or whatever it's called) such things as "...I just sent a shout-out to Ruth Bader-Ginsburg." Well, I'm glad she's doing well, too, but we simply don't require a congressperson twitting that to us "in real time," or even at all. It's useless and strikes me as being juvenile and narcissistic. (And, if certain people feel it necessary to share such a general notion with us, why don't they simply wait until after the speech to do so?)

That, I think, is my biggest problem with this Twitter phenomenon: it somehow suggests that people's relatively random thoughts are worthwhile to the rest of society. I disagree. What seems to me to be worthwhile is when people take some of their random thoughts and construct something practical out of them, which means that they build upon them and present what they've built in an impressive and thoughtful manner.

Then again, I've never found "quick conversational marketing" to be interesting; I find it to be dull. What sells me on something is a thoughtful argument as to why I ought to give that thing my attention. If someone twitted me something like "Did you see that hilarious [insert company name here] beer commercial?," I wouldn't care--it would not entice me to see that particular commercial. If, on the other hand, they took the time to let me know why seeing a particular commercial was worthwhile, I might keep my eye out for it. But for me, the "why" needs to be included in the initial sales-pitch, and not just in a "by-the-way" manner; the "why" needs to be the central component to the argument being made. Otherwise, the person sharing her or his thought(s) is doing so in a rather childish and off-handed manner in that it's just like someone saying, "Did you see that car? Do you see that bird? Do you want to hear me talk about other random stuff?"

I realize, however, that a big percentage of society sees things much differently than me; they like the quick sloganeering and tend to roll their eyes at what they probably see as "boring" argument construction. That doesn't make them worse or better than me, just different. For them, Twitter must be like eating a seemingly endless piece of delicious candy, because it lets them sift through what amounts to a lot of very quick commercials, whereas for me it's like eating the air--there's no substance to it, so why bother?