Why Engineers Don't Like Twitter

PabloSandoval48 writes, "A recent EE Times survey of 285 engineers found that 85% don't use Twitter. More than half indicated that the statement 'I don't really care what you had for breakfast' best sums up their feelings about it." Reader mattnyc99 notes a related article in which the authors analyzed the content of tweets during a recent World Cup game, finding 76% of them to be useless. "Out of 1,000 tweets with the #worldcup hashtag during the game, only 16 percent were legitimate news and 7.6 percent were deemed 'legitimate conversation' — which leaves 6 percent spam, 24 percent self-promotion, about 17 percent re-tweets, and a whopping 29 percent of useless observation (like this). Is the mainstream media making too big a deal out of the avalanche of World Cup tweets, or is the world literally flooding the zone?"

Comments

Breakfast?

[Kelson]

If your reason for not liking Twitter is "I don't really care what you had for breakfast," the problem isn't Twitter - it's that you need to find some more interesting friends.

Just like a telephone, its usefulness depends on who you have on the other end of the line.

Re:Breakfast?

[Anonymous Coward]

you need to find some more interesting friends

These are engineers we're talking about. They're lucky they have friends at all.

On a more serious note, what percentage of people are "interesting" enough to have worthwhile tweets?

Re:Breakfast?

[nine-times]

Yeah, I think the problem is that people on both sides, whether they love Twitter or hate it, are thinking that it's something more than it is. Its like a blog, but short. It's like an SMS message, but not necessarily directed at a particular person. It's like an IM status, but not tied to IM. It was a slightly interesting approach to dealing with Internet communication, but it's really not that unique or interesting. Some people use Twitter for inane information. Some people do the same thing with email. Some people post really inane blog entries. No big deal.

But somehow the media has bought into Twitter as some kind of technological marvel. "ZOMG! People are tweeting about the World Cup! Let's put those tweets on our show, so we can pretend to be technologically savvy and relevant!"'

Re:Breakfast?

[IANAAC]

I get immediate and brief headlines that can be easily followed up from various sources, including Science, Nature, NASA, the Economist, the BBC, and various other sources that are not otherwise succinctly aggregated in one place.

You mean like any bog-standard RSS reader?

Re:Breakfast?

[bobcat7677]

OK, lets get right down to the meat of the matter. What I'm not seeing so far in this thread is the root of the problem: the format of Twitter is such that not much of any real value can be published through it. The limit on how much a "tweet" can contain is simply too small. If the same limit was imposed on Slashdot stories nobody would be on here because none of us are stupid enough to click blind links and there wouldn't be enough space to put a decent description. This really sums up my first thought when I tried Twitter for 15 minutes "back in the day": "140 characters should be enough for everyone? What the *ell are we supposed to do with that?".

So?

[thetoadwarrior]

The same thing can pretty much be said about the whole internet to be fair.

Re:So?

[Mashiki]

Except I can find redeeming content on various parts of other websites that provide actual information. I don't with twitter, or facebook. Both can die in a blaze of their own fiery doom for all I care.

Re:So?

[Just Some Guy]

Except I can find redeeming content on various parts of other websites that provide actual information. I don't with twitter, or facebook.

Then your friends are boring. I guess I just hang out with more interesting people.

I'm serious. I see something interesting or funny on Facebook or Twitter at least a few times a day. If you don't, then that's because of the people generating the content you're reading.

Re:So?

[InlawBiker]

It's the Internet in microcosm. Engineers first used the Internet to pass technical information. Noise was kept to a minimum so work could get done. Then the engineers were surprised to find that the general public had an intense interest in fluff and chatter.

So it's the same thing with Twitter. We mostly ignore it, unless we're using it for geek thing we find important.

Not the method, but the users

[LoudMusic]

Most of our modern information delivery and socializing methods are actually pretty inventive and useful, until they are populated with the masses of morons that inhabit our Earth. And the one tweet the submitter linked to is a good example. It did actually have good information in it - Portugal scored a goal. But it was also filled with a bunch of personalized exclamation, which most people don't want to see.

The great thing is, you're not forced to view that person's Twitter feed. The hard part is finding one you ARE interested in.

Perhaps...

[tool462]

Perhaps MSM likes Twitter because it's the equivalent of 1,000 monkeys with 1,000 typewriters. There are so many people saying so many things, that they can likely find a quote that states whatever they want to state, but they then get to claim somebody else said it. Deniability is probably easier than fact checking.

Engineers make the world go around . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

They don't give a shit about Lindsay Lohan SCRAM (although the technology is interesting). They don't really care who killed Michael Jackson. And they probably think that Jesse James was an outlaw from the 1800's.

But they do seem to keep everything that civilization needs running . . .

it's like micro-blogs

[Tom]

By now, we should be familiar with the issue at hand.

It happened when people started making "personal webpages". Then came blogs. Then Facebook et al. Now Twitter.

Basically, most of the world lives in the misguided assumption that at least a tiny fraction of the rest of the world is interested in them. Statistically speaking, that's not true. But we have this old tribal desire to "express ourselves", to communicate with the rest of the tribe.

There's a few billion people on the Internet today. How many of them may even theoretically care about your dog, your house, your opinion of last nights local television program, or, in fact, you? A high mark of a thousand, for most of us. 10,000 at most for everyone who's not at least a minor celebrity. Even those 10k are less than 0.0005% of the Internet population. ppm is a better measure than percent here. It's a single-digit ppm. For the majority of us, not even 1 ppm.

Or, in short, nobody(*) fucking cares. Not what the name of your dog is and not what you think about soccer.

Twitter is Geocities, only shorter, and with even less content.

(*) where "nobody" is equal, but not identical, to zero, for all practical purposes.

Quick way of saying I don't want to be ...

[AnonymousClown]

"I don't really care what you had for breakfast,.."

Is really a quick way of saying that you don't want to bombarded by trivial details, irrelevant information or even relevant information. Just give me everything all at once and edit out the crap.

I don't care how interesting someone may be, getting updates about every little thing would be annoying; regardless of how relevant it may be.

Re:It's simple jealousy in my case

[AthleteMusicianNerd]

But the value in the product is not in the tech, it's in the marketing. The fact is, without major support from other major media outlets, twitter never would have survived.