A friend of mine, Jeremy, just discovered Twitter. Though he is himself skeptical of its usefulness, I thought it would be worth bringing up a relevant post over at Creating Passionate Users. It’s worth quoting at length:
We’ve all been at the brain bandwidth breaking point for the last five years. Email is out of control. IM’ing sucks up half the day. And how can we not read our RSS feeds, post to our blogs, and check our stats? If my Cingular cell phone sends me a MySpace alert and I’m not there to get it, do I exist? But email, IMs, social networking, and blogs are nothing compared to the thing that may finally cause time as we know it to cease. I’m talking, of course, about Twitter.
Now, I do think that the idea behind Twitter is kindof cool. However, I also know that if I started twittering, it would prevent me from getting anything else done. That being said, I look forward to seeing what Jeremy thinks of it–and I’ll know, ’cause he’ll twitter about it.
On a related note, I put forth the prediction that with the increase in cell phones, text messages, blogs, and sound bites, the ‘rare’ and possibly employable skill of the future will be the ability to think deeply. For a nice compare and contrast, look at Seth Goodin–a marketing blogger who posts many times a day– and Paul Graham–an essayist on entrepreneurship and programming who posts an essay every month or two. In general, I remember Goodin’s posts for a few minutes, but Graham’s essays stick with me. Graham’s essays make me think, and I often talk about them with others. I don’t think I’ve ever talked or thought much about Goodin’s posts.
What does that mean in regards to the best way to keep bonds of friendship across widespread geographies? Well, I’m know I’ve really enjoyed the number of People of Praise members blogging, but I don’t think I could keep up with everyone twittering. I guess it’s worth figuring out where the limits are.