"Twitter Ye Not"

Perhaps Frankie Howard knew something we didn't when he uttered the famous catchphrase.

However, Twitter is fast becoming the centre of attention for all sorts of reasons. Let's face it, for sheer utter banal drivel you would have to go a long, long way to beat it. Time and again I try my best to get into it but time and again it beats me back with unimaginative cods wallop, noise and constant retweets which are both unoriginal and unhelpful. Trying to filter out the guff is just too time consuming to warrant my attention but Lord knows I have tried. Life is too short to spend that much time on the valueless.

I read stuff from Thomas and Penny Power of Ecademy fame about the new age of the internet is about 'Being followed'. Some people have postulated that future CVs should be correlated by against your Peer Score on Klout.

But are people upping their self-importance and getting an ego boost or are they talking common sense?

One advantage of Twitter is the ability to follow famous people who you may be interested in. This has its upside and I do follow the likes of Shane Warne, Graeme McDowell, Jonathan Agnew etc and I actually quite like to see what they say. However, the very same stars see the downside.

Lee Westwood has recently said he is reconsidering his membership of Twitter after several Tweeters started to give him serious abuse. Ian Poulter has considered the same while Paul Lawrie has classed his account. Wayne Rooney has been the centre of a Tweeting storm in some of his retorts to an abuser. This has prompted Sir Alex Ferguson to even possibly impose a blanket ban on all his stars using the service. Which may come as some relief to Ryan Giggs - no pun intended.

The problem with accessibility to the stars is that while it can massage their egos and satisfy the genuinely interested, it also is open to abuse. This may be no worse than the intrusion of the media but it has an immediacy and directness which I am sure must be disconcerting.

For me, I have to say I am sanguine about Twitter. I cannot see how on earth it will further my career and I don't see the advantage of people following me or for me following them in most cases. If only people had something original and incisive to say maybe it would a different experience. Right now it's just hyped up garbage for 99% of all the Tweets.

That can't be a good model for the future. At some point, Twitter has to become something of real use other than the mundane.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad