Some of you may have seen Maureen Dowd’s op-ed about Twitter in Tuesday’s New York Times.
Geoff Manaugh makes an excellent case for the other side of the story, In Defense of Twitter.
There are several chuckles in Manaugh’s post, amidst the more substantive arguments:
[W]ill Dowd soon also be writing an editorial that excoriates lonely teenagers for writing down their thoughts on paper? After all, she bizarrely implies, “high-school girls” shouldn’t be allowed access to new forms of writing technology, so she must have been apoplectic when cheap pens and affordable notebooks first arrived in the office supply store: suddenly anyone, even blonde girls, could be writers.
Read the article for yourself and let me know what you think.
ME: Was there anything in your childhood that led you to want to destroy civilization as we know it?
maureen dowd is my new hero.
I am facebook friends with griff, I also follow him and logro on twitter. guess what? I get the same thing 3x. oh wait 4x, cause I subscribe to logro on google reader.
The only thing good to come out of twitter recently was steve agee reading 7k names live on ustream.
I agree with Anthony. 98% of the stuff on twitter is junk. who has time to sort through that much trash to find a gem? I followed a couple of twitterers for a week. everything tweeted was available elsewhere, so I read it twice.
I followed a couple of twitterers for a week. everything tweeted was available elsewhere, so I read it twice.
Twitter could surely
be put to far better use
by tweeting Haiku.
griff is my hero
he tweets multiple times now
give it a rest man!
Oh, you Luddites. Well, I tried.
do you really think twitter is a labor saving tech?
and yes, if I had a sledgehammer I would smash that fail whale and twitter bird to bits.
Griff gave a training in Brainerd’s Library, and I told him about Maureen Dowd’s piece in Wednesday’s NYTimes Opinion Page. She was out in San Francisco and interviewed the two creators of Twitter, both in their 30s. She provided a “transcript” of what was said, after opening with her strong negative opinion of the phenomenon. The creators gave a very impressive response to her probing questions. The upshot was that Twitter can be very useful and helpful for communications. Or can be trivial – it’s up to the user.
Remember the great expectations decades ago for educational television? PBS fulfills them today. Reality TV and “How I Met Your Mother”” do not.
I have some Facebook friends and follow Dan Schorr on Twitter. Glad to read views from “Southern Community Internet” up here in Aitkin. Thanks, Griff. -Gord
Hi Gord, good to meet you this week.
I enjoyed the Maureen Dowd column but she appears to have no clue as to its potential.
As I mentioned in my presentation, my latest leadership blogging hero and effective user of Twitter is Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston (6,000 employees, 800 doctors). His blog is at:
http://www.runningahospital.blogspot.com/
Follow him on Twitter at:
http://twitter.com/Paulflevy
In today’s NYT: The Chatty Classes: Why Twitter is the last thing D.C. needs.
a twitter cartoon:
http://img.timeinc.net//time/cartoons/20090327/cartoons_02.jpg
Finally, a good use for Twitter*:
The complete works of Shakespeare, Twittered.
For example:
http://opoyul.blogspot.com/2009/01/all-twittered-shakespeare-synopses.html
*:I read it on a blog, via a link sent to me by email.
score one for the power of twitter. I’ll still not tweet though:
http://www.velonews.com/article/97144