Thoughts RE: Twitter

Despite being a geek and loving technology, I tend to be a late adopter when it comes to new technology. I did not own a cellphone until late in 2005 and, despite having owned two of them now, have yet to actually purchase a Blackberry. I did not purchase an iPod until late in 2006. I was not on MySpace until a "friend" created an account for me alleging I was a 16-year-old gay boy from Alaska. Both of my laptops and both of my desktops have been, like both of my Blackberrys, hand-me-downs from friends or, even better, friend's companies.

I think this is largely driven by the fact that I rarely see the utility of all these wonderful toys that people keep releasing unleashing on the public. Another factor that drives this is that I like my technology to work the way it is meant to work and, as intelligent early adopters know, there are going to be kinks which need to be worked out with any bit of tech. Then there is the whole price penalty for being an early adopter and, deep down inside, I am a cheap bastard. But to be honest this has wandered away from the point a bit, which is my somewhat random thoughts on Twitter as I give in and sign up for an account.

I am not certain when Twitter first popped up on my radar. I think it was when one of my coworkers proposed that our team use this to give each other updates on where we were. Since we all have offices within about 200 feet of each other this idea was quickly shelved. (Of course the coworker in question is pretty much the LINUX guy from this TrueNuff Mac commercial spoof and feels the need to incorporate WAY too much tech into our processes. We call him The Complicator.) As Twitter has further penetrated the geek culture to which I pay some modicum of attention it has continued to pop up on my radar intermittently until last month (or maybe it was December) when it finally came up at the office in a legitimate context.

Now in order to answer some of the questions regarding Twitter that came up in this discussion at the office, I find myself creating an account. I was poking around the site when I came across this:

With Twitter, you can stay hyper-connected to your friends and always know what they're doing...Twitter puts you in control and becomes a modern antidote to information overload.

Wait, what? The VERY same product that allows me to stay "hyper-connected" is also a "modern antidote to information overload?" Is it just me or do those two things seem to be EXACT OPPOSITES and, at least to my small mind, mutually exclusive.

Oh well, you can follow me by searching for my name, with initial, or you can view my tweets via http://twitter.com/funkywoodjam.

I think.