The Tyranny of Twitter
Sunday, April 6th, 2008Seems like everybody is Twittering these days (or at least everyone in the wonderful world of Web).
For the uninitiated (unindoctrinatred?) Twitter is a service that let’s you tell your buds where you are and what you’re doing in up-to-the-minute detail (emphasis on “minute” as in ‘my-NOOT’). You can post to your Twitter via a cellphone text message and your pals subscribe to be notified when you “twitter” (verb). You can “follow” the tweets of others, having the site alert you by cellphone when friends update their accounts.
It’s this “text-message-broadcasting” that makes Twitter unique.
I’d always been of the opinion that all this twittering is not especially useful, and that instead of making life easier it adds an unnecessary layer of complexity. I recently had the perfect opportunity to test that assumption: the 2008 SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. I knew some folks who were going to attend and Twitter seemed like the perfect way to stay in immediate contact as we fanned out across the cavernous conference facilities.
At that it worked reasonably well. “Panel in Ballroom A rocks! - u should b here” or “I’m coming down from the second floor - meet me at the 4th Street entrance and we’ll go to lunch” were typical posts. On the other hand, I concluded that I could have easily survived - as I have for many years - without the tweeting.
There’s a certain tyranny about using Twitter. Ostensibly, one of the biggest reasons to use Twitter is to let your pals know where you are or what you’re thinking in up-to-the-minute fashion. So you can easily fall into a post-early-post-often-vortex in order to keep friends informed (otherwise, after all, they might think you’re dead, and come to look for you at your last-twittered location).
Many technological tools are like this. There’s a tantalizing enticement to do something you’ve never been able to do before (”Cool, I can send a single text message to a Web site and it can alert all my friends? Dude!”). We spend a lot of time in front of our computers… because we can (I’m guilty as charged). We use devices that save us time - but if we then fill up that newly-found free time with activities that aren’t very meaningful, our quality of life goes down, not up.
There’s a usability message here: before adopting a new technological device or app we should take a serious look at whether these tools truly help make our lives easier and better - or merely different.
