Re:Ask: Why do people need Twitter, anyway?
by krschultz on Wednesday April 23, 2008 @03:40PM
(#171792)
Clearly a man who has never spent time on a boat. If you ever want to find out why Twitter is irrelevent, learn how to sail and disconnect for a week. You will learn a lot about how meaningless Twitter is once you disconnect from email/phone/internet/tv/radio for a week and feel incredibly liberated. If you want to find an idea that will change the world, disconnect from it all for a short period. When you come back the first thing you will do is cancel your Twitter, aim, etc and the next thing you will do is start doing something meaningful to more people than just those who are plugged into the net 24 hours a day.
Re:Ask: Why do people need Twitter, anyway?
by noodle on Wednesday April 23, 2008 @04:06PM
(#171817)
ironic that, as a person who clearly spent time on a boat, you're still posting on HN in a twitter thread instead of curing cancer or something.
Re:Ask: Why do people need Twitter, anyway?
by krschultz on Wednesday April 23, 2008 @04:28PM
(#171845)
You certainly won't find me on twitter/irc/aim, but I read Hacker News because there are generally intelligent stories. And a "Do you need Twitter' thread is right up my alley. Actually I work on computer vision not cancer, but if it ends up working out cars will drive themselves and some lives will be saved. It probably doesn't pay as well as founding a throw away social networking Web 2.0 whatever, but it is more fulfilling than networking on Twitter all day to see if I can get my noticed for something.
just like, for example, a boat is useful if your profession is fishing or something that requires you to be on the water, but a boat is a hole in the water where you throw your money if you have a boat for recreational purposes.
such is twitter. use it right, and its useful and good. use it for fun or trivial purposes and its kind of silly.
another good analogy for twitter, i think, is the boy who cried wolf. i'll read peoples tweets when they only have one a week or something, because i know its meaningful/profound/etc. and thats the purpose -- to be able to quickly and easily contact a lot of people via a lot of channels. but if you have 30 a day, i won't read a single one.