Twitter, Schmitter

From the excellent (and unfortunately no longer updated) blog,

Creating Passionate Users by Kathy Sierra.

Twitter is ridiculous. Have we really "progressed" so far that we need to know what every single one of our 567 MySpace friends is doing at this very instant? I mean, c'mon. No, John, I don't really care that you sneezed 5.13 seconds ago.

Maybe social networking is just pointless all together. MySpace and Facebook (or MyFace and SpaceBook, as I like to call them) are enormous networks with more people than you could ever hope to meet in your lifetime. I think the old adage of "Everything in moderation, including moderation" comes into play here. Social networks can be very useful and fun for some things, but they are no substitute for person-to-person interaction. Excess amounts of time spent on them may lead to deteriorating social skills and hermit-like behavior. You may (God forbid) have to go out sometime, see real people, scream "Humans!" and run away in terror.

I know I haven't been getting out enough when I start updating my blogs and/or Facebook (yes, I have one) too often. And do my friends really need to know what I'm doing all the time? I don't think so.

I suppose people are just searching for "connected-ness." That's why they use MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Digg, Technorati, Google Groups, email, and text message. Don't even get me started on texting. I'll rant about that another time.

For now, c u l8r. (Updated 7.6 seconds ago)