I tried and rejected Twitter in 07, returned in January, followed it via the Twhirl desktop client and the TwitterFox plug in, and now am basically saying it sucks yet again.
Sure, it’s another valid channel to monitor from a brand reputation standpoint. Who is bitching or praising brand terms is a good thing to know. But in terms of signal-to-noise ratios, it’s mostly noise, a classic example of the ourosborosphere/echo chamber promoting their latest blog posts, product beta, or book on social networking.
Only two twitter accounts really caught my attention — and both are demented. One was Merlin Mann’s @hotdogsladies and the other was @ainsleyofattack (recommended by Merlin). The reality — I don’t care what some Forrester, Jupiter, TechCrunch, GigaOm bloviator has to say about ButtDog 2.0, whether they want to organize a “tweet-up” at the brew pub after the BarCamp, or if they think Twitter’s Fail Whale is the meme of the week.
No, what I like to read is dementia such as this Tweet from @ainsleyofattack: “AinsleyofAttack It’s confirmed. During sex I sound like a laundry bag filled with chihuahuas being smacked against a MoonBounce.
So, rather than unsub from everyone who talks about things that bore me to tears (should it be called social media? what is the ROI of social media? why do airlines suck?), I decided to expand my circle of suck to include everything, and I mean everything, but joining the cool kids’ march to FriendFeed.
Which meant installing a FriendFeed desktop client — the Alert Thingy — which rolls the whole burrito of diggs, delicious tags, flickr uploads, Amazon buys, tweets, etc. into one cacophony of desktop alerts.
