social media and mass transportation...

So I was on the bus the other day, and I was creeping on the guy next to me for lack of anything better to do, when I saw that he was updating his Twitter account from his phone. I realize that some people refer to this as "Tweeting", however I choose to abstain from using this term as I find it incredibly lame.

Anyway, this got me to thinking about Twitter as a medium, compared to other social networking sites such as Facebook (or the ancient site recently discovered by anthro-paleontologists which was apparently called "Myspace").

Though I've never really liked Twitter, I realize that it definitely does have some useful features, that aren't really incorporated into it's Face-Space counterparts:

Twitter is really great for letting people know what you are thinking about having for dinner. It's 140 character maximum for posts ensures that nothing of any real substance can be conveyed through it.

Facebook, on the other hand, is much more in depth, giving users room to write essentially what amount to small novellas about themselves, and to their friends and acquaintances in the form of messages or postings. Blogs, like the one I'm currently writing (and none of you are currently reading) share this feature.

On advantage that Twitter does have over other forms of social media however, is the immediacy that it carries. Many people have their twitter accounts sent or linked to their cell phones, so Twitter has actually become a primary means for some people to stay connected to current events or to friends and family. (How else am I supposed to find out what my brother is planning to watch on DVD later tonight?)

Twitter seems like a great way to direct people to OTHER places on the web that actually DO have meaningful content.

Another great feature that has not eluded me, that Twitter holds over the heads of other social media sites is its ease of use. It can easily be updated, say, on the bus, whereas other sites take a little more effort to maintain. Having something like Twitter to keep people occupied on the bus, for example, is a good way to keep people from doing creepy things, like watching strangers update their Twitter accounts.