Twitter is a passing fad that soon will go the way of Citizens Band radio
April 29th, 2009 at 03:12pm Pat Cunningham
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 Remember the CB radio craze of the 1970s? It came and went in the blink of an eye — and the same thing seems likely to happen to Twitter, the social-networking phenomenon.
 My sense from the get-go that Twitter was just a passing fad is vindicated by THIS REPORT.
 With any luck, I’ll get through this life without ever having tweeted — just as I’ve never used a CB radio and never will.
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8 Comments Add your own
1. DingDong | April 29th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Breaker, Breaker Pat, come on. You got the Ding here. I am into technology and this thing looks like it would be annoying. In others words I agree. 10-4, catch on the flip flop.
2. Linda Grist Cunningham | April 29th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
PTC: You sound like one of Sweeny’s old Luddites…. I’ve been a Twitter girl since December 2007. And, I agree, it’s darn near impossible to wrap one’s head around “why does this exist.” Almost like “why is there air….”
But, while Twitter itself may fade, the underlying usefulness of exchanging fast info will not. Whether Twitter, txt or holograms, they are all part of what will become the fabric of how we share info. It’s not about Twitter; it’s about applying the underlying functionality.
3. Pat Cunningham | April 29th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Linda: I don’t disagree with you on the overall efficacy of social-networking media, but Twitter strikes me as an overhyped fad. It’s just a cross between texting and blogging, and I have my doubts that such a hybrid — or at least this one — has much of a future. I’m not familiar with Twitter’s business model, but the service doesn’t seem likely to effectively lend itself to advertising, in which case it’s probably going to be supplanted by something else.
In the final analysis, I’ve felt no great urge to tweet. And if I don’t think it’s cool, I doubt that it will endure. I say that not just because I’m old. I’ve been pretty excited by nearly all the new media over the past 30 years and spent a lot of time on Compuserve years before the World Wide Web was established. I even predicted early on that the blogosphere would be a huge phenomenon.
I figure that Twitter will fade to niche status instead of living up to the lofty expectations some people accorded it when it first burst upon the scene.
Remember where you heard it.
4. Franklin Pierce | April 29th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Pat - you could be right (about niche status) - but that’s a true statement applied to just about everything in the digital age, until the next new thing comes along. If you think Twitter is just about posting banal 140 character updates about what you had for dinner, I think you’re missing the point. But, as you admit, you’re dismissing it without having even tried it (as Maureen Dowd did in last week’s NYT column.) I don’t think there is a future in stupid personal 140-character updates, but there is great value in it for celebrities to shape their images and companies and organizations to talk to their various publics. You must be able to see how newspapers, TV and radio can harness the underlying technology to their advantage. Right?
5. Pat Cunningham | April 29th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
You make good points, Franklin, and perhaps I have been a little too dismissive of Twitter. I definitely agree that the underlying technology of Twitter (and of lots of other digital stuff) has the potential for adaptation to all sorts of exciting applications. It’s just that tweets from celebs, politicians and journalists don’t much appeal to me. If any of them ever tweets about anything truly worthwhile, I’ll hear about it soon enough. Besides, I doubt that any of them is going to waste anything special in a lousy tweet. Anyway, who knows? I might relent and end up tweeting myself into an early grave.
6. Craig Knauss | April 29th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
I compare Twitter more to 8-track tape players. They worked great for a short period of time before something better (cassettes) came along. And then the cassettes were themselves replaced with Compact Disks. I, myself, don’t Twitter. I can’t. I don’t even have a cell phone. I find them annoying when used in public.
7. LD | April 30th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Twitter could be useful if it was used for emergencies:
“The following Rockford Schools have been shut down due to Swine Flu…”
“A tornado has touched down in Poplar Grove, seek shelter”
“Britney Spears has been spotted at Walmart on State”
8. kevin | May 19th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Blogging is also a passing fad, and you seem to be just fine with it.
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