Product Update, Social Commentary - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 15:41 - 1 Comment

No One ‘Needs’ Twitter

From Techcrunch: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/22/twitter-may-not-have-to-care-about-uptime-any-longer/trackback/

I love this first quote by Mikey:

We used to speculate that Twitter’s persistent downtime and overall poor service quality could result in a Friendster-type nose dive. But after a three day weekend outage I realized that in the last two months a subtle shift occured: I now need Twitter more than Twitter needs me.

You need twitter? I have heard some sad pathetic shit in my life, but this might take the cake. Which part do you need most? The ability to tell a handful of tards what color your poop is? Or is the need to believe a handful of tards actually care what color your poop is? I would guess it’s the latter.

So while Robert Scoble speculates that FriendFeed is the big winner when Twitter goes down, and Dave Winer hacks together contingency plans for the next outage that remind me of stockpiling candles and bottled water for the next big storm, I just shake my head at how wonderfully we’ve all been had.

What I’ve learned is that when Robert Scoble and other luminary (I use the word in the loosest seense possible. Loose like a fat dudes waistband before he hits the buffet line) tech nerds talk about anything being a big winner the only real winners are the people who never read a word they say.

For others the Twitter habit started long ago. And for most people, it is yet to start. But the trend is clear: Twitter is becoming an Internet utility.

Nothing could be less clear. Twitter hasn’t proven itself to be a utility for anything other then increasing the narcissism and worthless info on the internet.

Let’s compare it against a site created so people can show their butts to each other:

The domination of twitter and another site (that will remain nameless) by a site that mostly consists of awful amateur videos just shows how unneeded twitter is.

Let me make this clear: NO ONE NEEDS TWITTER!

To even suggest that reveals a complete and total lack of understanding about people and the real needs people have in their lives. Half the people in the world can’t find food and Mikey is lamenting twitter.

Mike = The biggest tool in the tool box in the biggest tool shed on the interwebs.

edit:
From Scoble

Of course, today I gave a talk to Stanford’s Sloan program (bunch of MBA students). Only a handful had heard of Twitter. That’s Twitter’s future growth. What if they hear Twitter sucks and that FriendFeed is where they should participate?

It’s interesting he would come to the conclusion that people who haven’t heard of Twitter would go to FriendFeed. My conclusion would be that no one with real lives cares about twitter or friendfeed. They may or may not use it, but they surely don’t care if it goes away tomorrow. People in Standford’s MBA program have a lot more interesting and important things to worry about.