OT: Anyone else find Twitter updates irksome?

[campybatman]

I mean in the context of the NBA. Before this season, when I think Villanueva was reportedly Twittering during an actual game. I'd never heard of or knew what Twitter is. Then the Patriots used Twitter to report news during the NFL draft this year. So from that, I gained somewhat of an understanding about it as an informational tool. But now, it's getting ridiculous... You've these jokers posing as NBA players reporting updates on players' situations and what have you. Stop it. It isn't funny. Fans going nuts over bleep that's bogus. It's confusing, what's truth, rumor or just plain a joker being an ass on Twitter to evoke emotions from fans reading into it.

How do others feel about Twitter? Do you use it, converse with actual players? Should fans stick to the news/rumor sites as before?

[JCizzle]

I hate Twitter. NOBODY CARES THAT YOU'RE WATCHING A MOVIE OR GOING TO STARBUCKS!

[campybatman]

I might be wrong but I've a feeling that Twitter equals fad.

[Celtic Esquire]

I used to like Twitter, but sometimes the updates are too numerous. I don't give a damn what some celeb ate for breakfast.

I cut my subscriptions on Twitter to sports reporter and my close friends.

I use Facebook for everything else.

[BRUNiNHO91]

Twitter sucks...and I don't believe anything that comes from there..well..maybe like 2% of the things that come from there. But that's all...

[Dave_From_NB]

I've been in the IT industry 25 years, and the longer I'm in it the more I want to tune out. I thought going to ball games with friends and having them sit there doing friggin e-mails on their Blackberries was bad enough. The whole Twitter thing is something I could see my 5 year old relating to, being spammed with gibberish is something I'll pass on though thanks.

[Jwade]

I've have multiple athletes answer questions of mine.

So I love it.

[Jimmy103]

Twitter will verify some accounts depending on the status of the celebrity.

We saw this in the Ron Artest calls the Celtics a bunch of social security ballers or something, turned out that "Real_Ron_Artest" was not real and certified.

[Fencer reregistered]

Twitter will verify some accounts depending on the status of the celebrity.

We saw this in the Ron Artest calls the Celtics a bunch of social security ballers or something, turned out that "Real_Ron_Artest" was not real and certified.

Are you saying it's been disproved that that's really Ron Artest, or just that Twitter hasn't officially verified the account.

Anyhow, celebrities who've answered me on Twitter include Peter King and LeVar Burton. Ironically, Burton started on Twitter only because there was a fake account in his name, and he took it over. He used it very well IMO, but seems to have gotten bored with it and isn't updating much. Both Burton and Shaq have use Twitter to invite real fans to meet them in bars or diners.

Burton's comment on this post is pretty funny: http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/39695

[BigCelticket]

I think Twitter is a very useful tool once you know the best way to use it. I know this had nothing to do with anything, but June 30th I tweeted to Charlie Villenueva telling him to sign with Detroit instead of Cleveland like everyone thought he would do. I'm sure he already knew his plan, but I felt cool knowing that he had read that, then followed through with it. I feel that Twitter isn't working to its full capacity yet, though. I think they will go through a big change and everyone will join and realize how useful it is. It will be like Myspace was or Facebook is in terms of popularity.

[Cyclical]

I find Twitter irksome. I find all social networks irksome. I find the need to update and let the world know your every thought and move irksome. But then again, maybe I'm just not of the right generation. Now get off my lawn.

[Fencer reregistered]

And while this is way non-sports:

Anybody who thinks Twitter is useless might want to reflect on the fact that it's a leading source of information out of and reflected back into Iran, notably as per the Green Brief series -- http://iran.whyweprotest.net/news-curre ... -06-a.html

[Bleeding Green]

I don't know if I like or dislike twitter, but I mostly hate people complaining about it.

[greenbeans]

meh, I don't really care enough to hate the multiple updates, it at most takes up a minute of my time. There's usually some cool stuff I didn't know about every time I check it out, so I'm a fan.

[crm0922]

I hate Twitter. NOBODY CARES THAT YOU'RE WATCHING A MOVIE OR GOING TO STARBUCKS!

QFT

[campybatman]

Bengals receiver Chad Ochocinco loves Twitter.

And he tweets everywhere and anywhere, about anything and everything.

He now says that he'll tweet during games.

"You know, it's funny -- I like it," Ochocinco recently told KGOW in Houston. "I like it because it gives me the opportunity to reach out to thousands of people at one time. It gives me a chance to get my story across when something goes wrong... It's big for me and I'm taking it a step further.

But before Chad grabs a Sprint phone and announces to the world, "Child please!" or "Damn damn!" after scoring a touchdown or fires off a string of "yo mama" jokes during a lull in the action, he might want to check with the league office and/or his team's front office before doing any in-game tweeting.

Because the technology is so new, no NFL player has tried to tweet on game day from the stadium. In the NBA, Milwaukee Bucks forward Charlie Villanueva chose to tweet from the locker room at halftime, before being told to cease and desist by coach Scott Skiles.

Regardless of how it all turns out, we assume that the league and its team's will be required to hatch a Twitter policy, and we have a feeling that in-game tweets will be forbidden.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... ing-games/

[JCizzle]

And while this is way non-sports:

Anybody who thinks Twitter is useless might want to reflect on the fact that it's a leading source of information out of and reflected back into Iran, notably as per the Green Brief series -- http://iran.whyweprotest.net/news-curre ... -06-a.html

Food for thought:

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2009/0 ... evolution/

Twitter—a mass of user-supplied tactical information—is essentially a crowdsourced version of CNN. Information is produced at rapid-fire speed by popular users (a “hub” in network terminology) and reproduced by those who “follow” them. This multiplication effect produces a false multi-source confirmation as users rapidly replicate themselves across the information stream—a literal form of mirror-imaging. 5 What seemed like a huge “Army of Davids” was in reality a small group of users whose tweets were replicated en masse by their followers.

A study on Twitter’s role in the Iranian protests by Harvard’s Web Ecology project found that 59.3% of participating users contributed only 14.1% of the total number of Tweets, the top 10% most active users accounted for 65.5% of total Tweets, and 1 in 4 Iran-related Tweets were re-Tweets of another user’s content. 6 As Shlok Vaidya noted, Twitter was a useful source of information during the Mumbai attacks because of the smaller number of users—now the data overflow has halved its effectiveness. 7

Twitter and other microblogging sites have become nodes in a vast network chain of tactical information sources that includes 24-hour network news, wire services, and blogs. This network is a giant self-feeding and self-referencing loop that spreads similar content virally through a diverse group of both old and new media outlets. Those inside the loop have the illusion that they are better informed than everyone else. At best, they may be in a mixed system with a great deal of white noise and some valuable information. At worst, they’re trapped in a closed information loop that takes them further and further away from reality.

Media hype over Twitter and other social media platforms is part and parcel of what John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid call “infoenthusiasm”—a mode of technological thinking that relentlessly proclaims the revolutionary potential of new technologies while ignoring their overall social context and transaction costs. 8 Infoenthusiasts are forever announcing “the end” of various things, including the press, brokers, firms, politics, government, cities, and the nation-state itself. 9 The rapidly increasing power of information technology alone, they claim, will empower the individual and radically redefine institutions by cutting away the middle and lower layers.

With that said, I do agree with this sentiment:

The purpose of this article is not to bash Twitter, social networking, or blogs, but to critically examine problems in the open-source information ecosystem that “infoenthusiasts” largely ignore and explore possible solutions to the data glut. 3 Twitter and other microblogging tools may not lead to an information elite, but they can undoubtedly be part of a crowdsourced solution.

[Dave_From_NB]

Bengals receiver Chad Ochocinco loves Twitter.

And he tweets everywhere and anywhere, about anything and everything.

He now says that he'll tweet during games.

"You know, it's funny -- I like it," Ochocinco recently told KGOW in Houston. "I like it because it gives me the opportunity to reach out to thousands of people at one time. It gives me a chance to get my story across when something goes wrong... It's big for me and I'm taking it a step further.

Man, if I was his teammate I think I'd lose my patience after about 2 dropped passes if he started playing with his gadget instead of focusing on the game. Not sure if I'd break his gadget into a million pieces or ram it down his throat, but it would be fun to see which alternative came out.

Anyone think a Celtic is going to run the risk of KG going postal by playing with his gadget on the sidelines?

[greenbeans]

Football locker rooms are a LOTTTTTTT more different than basketball locker rooms. "tweeting" won't fly.

[Celtics_Champs]

Agreed GB. **** won't fly at all.