Any of you guys use Twitter?

[Andy]

I think Twitter is pretty special education but maybe it's me. Why the hell would anyone want to hear about some other schmoe's half-baked thoughts on anything 10 times a day? What's worse is all the mainstream media's incessant reports on who's tweeting now or the latest celeb to tweet.

[BLINGMW]

I DO NOT KNOW. Seriously. Get off my lawn with that twitter crap

[ScottyB]

i'm on it for the singular reason of following a few people in my industry who do some influential stuff so that i'm not way behind the times. i haven't even figured out how to track these people or do other crap since i'm still so new to it.

i think it could be useful but it seems to mostly be yet another way of people blogging (i hate that term) about stupid BS to all their psuedo friends so they feel like their life has worth. i think alot of people, especially the younger generations, have become socially inept in light of having electronics strapped to them 24/7. why bother trying to figure out how to be less awkward in real life when you can just type something up?

i definitely agree that the media needs to give it a freaking rest. but then again, when has the media made sense?

[CaptainHenreh]

Closest thing I get to being a Twat is facebook's status updates.

I, personally, at least sort of understand it, but don't really see any value in it.

[Dave]

I think it is truly retarded and is just a fad... Like Rex, my status update on Facebook is as close as I'll get, and I'm doing good if I update that more than once a week.

[Mike]

I tried it. It's as retarded as it seems.

[JohnC]

I use it daily, and like it. A lot of the time, it is silly updates. A lot of the time, it's a great way to stay in touch with the local crowd (be it tech or anything else). The local Charlottesville tech crowd is very Twitter-centric, and it's a great way to stay up to date on the projects and technologies everyone is using without a lot of effort. And, since it updates my facebook status, it basically serves as my interface to social networking.

I've written a couple of Charlottesville-oriented Twitter apps:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://twitter.com/SOCAWatcher">http://twitter.com/SOCAWatcher</a><!-- m --> - Local soccer league status updates, field closures, etc
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://twitter.com/RIDSWatcher">http://twitter.com/RIDSWatcher</a><!-- m --> - Near real-time rescue squad incidents, map links (this was morbidly fun to debug/test - "Hey Jess, my app just posted an update, looks like someone had a heart attack at 123 Fake St!")

Last but not least, the local late-night hot dog van tweets their location

[BLINGMW]

Good thing you're signing up for the bike weekend to recover my lost respect for you John.

[G.Irish]

I have an account and I haven't quite figured out what I want to do with it yet. I figure I'll use it to update TOV, especially when I'm at the track. I read the feeds from a couple of the AMA SBK riders and one of the moto journalists I know but that's about it because I don't wanna get flooded with updates from everyone else.

My problem with the micro-blogging (Facebook updates included) is that it ends up being a stream of a lot of stuff you don't want to read, punctuated by the little that you do. I think the big thing all of this stuff needs is more advanced filtering and search tools so I can focus on what is of interest to me. Not being able to filter and organize things just results in a lot of noise.

At work they're using a form of Twitter called Yammer that is basically a shared twitter dashboard. Personally I hate it because when people post links it's always with a some vague description that doesn't tell me enough for me to decide whether I want to click on it. It has the same stupid 140 character limit which really doesn't make any sense to me. If you can't post complete sentences or thoughts it really makes it a lot less useful (or almost useless). I'm actually pushing to get a better form of a social recommended links system implemented at work so people can actually get value out of it.

[Apoc]

I use it, but mostly to follow amusing things (textsfromlastnight.com) and people who are experts in fields I enjoy (photography, etc).

I don't see much value in using it to follow friends... maybe because I don't really have any.

[lillitnn92]

i use it in conjunction with Facebook. i usually send the updates in together. i have a few friends on Twitter who are not in the area and it's kinda cool to see what they are up to now and then. i just have it so my phone isn't going off every 3 seconds though.

[Mike]

At work they're using a form of Twitter called Yammer that is basically a shared twitter dashboard.

We just began using it as well. We're a small company so there isn't info overload; nice to see what others are working on/thinking. Much easier than internal blogs, wikis, or e-mail.

[Jake]

I use it. It's nice for little updates - picture sharing on the go, for example. I also follow some JMU accounts. Dining gives you the daily specials at the different dining halls, there's a UREC one for any updates on hours, things like that.

I also tweet about things between friends. It's pointless and stupid and we know it. I have a very limited texting plan, though, so Twitter makes up for that.

[Maengelito]

I use it too, but I'll admit its not really that valuable for much. I can see what Chapin is doing or the latest LOLcats picture, and during the playoffs, I read a lot on rockthered. I did find it funny that a few of my friends out in LA tweeted about the earthquake they had a couple of weeks ago minutes after it happened. I couldn't really find out anything about it on the news until the next morning. The first really useful thing I saw on it was last week when I found out that traffic was backed up because there was a utility pole down on my road. I called Jenn and let her know what was going on. Aside from that, its just basically a different avenue for updates.