Twitter. It’s all over the news lately and has millions of subscribers. I signed up for an account when I first read about it last year, got confused, then bored, and never did even a single “tweet.”

Twitter is a “microblogging” tool that lets you post very short messages, or “tweets” (140 characters or less) about what you’re doing. You can let your friends know what you’re up to, or let anyone else “follow” you.  And you can post and receive messages via email, IM and cell phone.

But the problem is that most of these short posts are meaningless, time-wasting drivel, which would be fine with me if they weren’t also so crushingly boring. Who on earth wants to read their friend’s dullest moment-by-moment details, never mind the details of dozens of strangers they may be following?

I figured I am probably missing something, in the same way that for years I didn’t get the point of text messaging, and I still don’t get the point of Facebook, Plurk, Pownce and Myspace in the business world. Also, just because boring people write boring things on Twitter doesn’t mean it’s the medium’s fault. So I spent a bit of time googling and thinking about it.

Read the rest of this entry »