Twits on Twitter 2

Melissa Dribben twits no more. Read the whole thing:

It’s not that the swift, succinct social network has wronged me in any way. My relationship with e-mail has been far more strained. Twitter has never, as far as I know, infected my computer with viruses, slimed my home page with pop-up porn clips, or clogged my family’s cyber-arteries with spam. E-mail has done all of this, plus losing important messages and sending me annoying notes telling me my mailbox is full and to please deal with the problem. (She must use Microsoft Lookout–ed.)

But if e-mail is the exasperating, all-knowing secretary you would love to fire but can’t live without, Twitter is the lightning-fast tattooed bike messenger who never brings a package worth opening.

I see the effects of Twitter when I log on Facebook–lots of little status updates with “@somethingorother” in them–the “@somethingorother” feeds Twitter search.

No, I really don’t care that someone or other is in line at the @DMV, even though I really like someone or other and respect his work.

Facebook (and Facebook could be any social network–it just happens to be the one that I’m a member of) has done more for me than I ever expected.

I joined Facebook because a friend of mine asked me to do so in order to facilitiate communication about the local Drinking Liberally chapter. It has enabled me to (cyber?)meet and chat with some interesting and funny persons from all over the world–persons I otherwise would never have met and whom I will likely never see in person, just as one might meet charming and delightful persons by going to a new pub, a really really big pub, every evening–as well as allowed me to irritate persons I already knew several times a day with just a few keystrokes.

I know widely-separated friends and families who find Facebook and similar services convenient ways to stay in touch. Makes sense–it’s easier than a letter or even an email for sharing the humdrum events of day-to-day life. Sharing the humdrum events of day-to-day life. rather than just the infrequent triumphs and tragedies, keeps families and friendships vital.

Also, in my case, because of few letters typed in an “I wonder” moment, Facebook quite unexpectedly Changed My Life: someone who was part of my past is now my present and future. Frankly, that is something that would not have happened, no matter how many new pubs I visited, without the proper alignment of the planets with Facebook.

But, on a daily basis, Facebook, for all the possible enjoyments and the rare change-your-life event, is froth. Fun froth, but still froth.

Hogan’s Heroes was froth, but I still watch the reruns whenever I can.

Twitter is not even froth.

Twitter is just silly.

It is the Pet Rock of cyberspace.