This entry was posted April 15 2009 under Uncategorized.

4 comments

I’ve been noticing a hot new trend on the Internet lately, and I think we need to cut it off at the head. Thousands of bloggers and hundreds of print columnists are writing boring, rambling articles about their mostly homogeneous Twitter experience. The average article goes something like this:

- I heard about Twitter because Shaq/Barack Obama uses it
- I signed up and at first I didn’t really know what was going on
- Then I started liking it
- Then I made a joke about how I was limited to 140 characters
- Then I started thinking it was stupid
- But I’m still using it… until the next hot e-trend comes around!

I want this to stop. I understand that as a technology writer, it’s your job to keep abreast of current trends, but the sad fact is that you’re way late to the party and no one is interested in your bland Twitter experience. The existence of a hot new social networking website does not compel you to document your user experience. In fact, Twitter can serve to make this process much easier if you absolutely must talk about it. Just Tweet “using Twitter” and then go write an article about something that requires a little more research than just doing something that millions of people are doing every day.

Next Week: So what exactly is this “Face-book” anyway?