Twitterpated

I'm skipping ahead and blogging about the whole microblogging phenomenon before I blog about YouTube, et al. I'm sure the world will continue to rotate on its axis.

I don't know whether the inventors of Twitter or Tumblr are intending to be annoying, but I find them so. During my video search for the previous Discover 2.0 item, I stumbled across the CommonCraft video on Twitter. I love the CommonCraft videos in general because they explain technology succinctly and clearly. But this one made me laugh because there was a moment in it when Lee LeFever explains that we're interested in what our friends & family are doing but that we wouldn't email them to tell them we're drinking coffee...and yet you can Twitter this information out to everyone in your circle! Aack! If I wouldn't bother people with an email, why in the world would I bother them with constant, pointless updates on my every little move? This is a waste of everyone's time. I cannot express how irritating I find this concept. So do I think it has library potential? God, I hope not! The only redeeming value to the technology seems to be that you have to self-select, in essence to sign yourself up for it. Something I will NOT be doing anytime soon.

Tumblelogs are not quite as annoying, in my opinion. If you have absolutely nothing better to do with your time (you're imprisoned in a dungeon with no books but only a computer, for example), I can see how having one of these or reading someone else's could be fun. I did find a couple of interesting little tidbits on someone's Tumblr posts. Don't think I could necessarily locate the interesting posts again, but that's OK. It's not that important. Frankly, I don't see the appeal of spending all your time finding links or videos or quotes to post on a microblog. If you've got something to post, why can't you post it on a regular blog? There is no minimum length requirement! Personally I'm much more interested in why a person thinks XYZ is worth sharing. Lists of links with no explanatory messages don't tell me why I should spend my valuable time clicking on the links.

Maybe I'm just grumpy because I seem to have too much to do, and all these people on these Twitter & Tumblr sites seem to have WAY too much free time.