Only Losers Use Twitter: A Question on Online Social Trends

Or so a recent NYTimes columnist seems to portray Twitter users: as people who just can't let go. Then again, it was from the perspective of a mother trying to get her teenagers to join her in social networking. Meaning that for the most part, teenagers tend to be embarrassed to associate themselves with their parents when their reputation is at stake.

“Maybe Twitter isn’t the right tool for that job,” he said. “The people who I see using it are an older demographic, people in marketing or P.R. or advertising, who use it for work, to present themselves as particular types of people. They’ll twitter, ‘I’m traveling,’ or ‘I’m going to interesting restaurants.’ They’re using it to do identity work.”

But my children didn’t see anything useful about carrying on that sort of a monologue. Their idea of communication, he said, may be more of a two-way conversation where both parties have something specific to discuss.

I guess Twitter can seem somewhat narcissistic and maybe part of it is - as with any social media - wanting to have people notice us and hear/read what we want to say. But I still say it's a great networking tool. I've met a couple of people already that I might never would have met and have plans to meet others on my follow list.

But then again, I have the same sort of sentiments that Ms. Slatalla has towards Lifecasting. If you think getting text messages of every move you make during the day, what about having a camera broadcast your every action? I'm amazed sometimes that people want to watch others play video games or watch them typing on a computer. Are we that lonely that we need to watch people broadcast mundane tasks on the internet?

Or is even about loneliness? Is it about a social need to interact.... Or about wanting to know anything and everything about everything and everyone there is to know?

What do you think?