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twitter - you've gone too far

Have you heard of twitter? If not, it is a social broadcasting (micro-blogging) website where people can track friends and be tracked by others. The only functionality of the site is reading and adding messages under the 140 character limit to answer the ultimate question “what are you doing?”

This tool has taken off in ways no one could have predicted, and some bloggers originally seeing this as a useless idea have even flipped their script now that they see the social hole on the internet that twitter fills. In a world so disconnected, we are all looking to connect — even if not IRL.

Today, I am questioning the most current use of twitter. Currently there is a presidential debate brewing between Obama and McCain and it’s all happening on twitter. This all sounds like a good idea in theory, but let me demonstrate by copying the twitter I posted this morning around this event:

“Writing in 140 char (twitter limit) to show why twitter is not a great idea for presidential debates.140 char isn’t much, so no real content”

It seems to me that this idea falls down on some many levels:

1) Supports the “we just need the sound byte” culture that is really starting to bug me. In only 140 characters, all one can achieve is a sound byte – and not even a great sound byte.

2) They aren’t actually using it the way it is intended to be used: To answer the ultimate question of “what are you doing?” Couldn’t they focus on micro-blogging from the campaign trail or something very close to the intent of twitter? That could actually be interesting.

3) They aren’t actually twittering! If you read through the transcript, they are being represented by others. This seems even more defiant to the tools actual purpose, and also counter to the way debates generally run.

4) This gets back to my 140 character message to prove a point, but this debate is totally complicated and almost impossible to follow. I guess they wanted the “tech set” to “get it”, but unless this was intended to be written by LOL cats I am confused by how this is supposed to be easy to read and understand.