The Twatterati

I've dabbled with many web applications over the years, mostly with a view to using them to promote The Sleaze, and have abandoned pretty much all of them pretty quickly. The reality is that they were all pretty useless for this purpose and, as far as I could see, were utterly pointless for any other purpose. Perhaps worst of all were those 'social news' sites like Digg and Reddit. The reality of such sites are that they tend to end up run by cliques, and if you aren't part of one of these groups then the chances are that anything you submit there won't ever get sufficient votes to get ranked, regardless of its quality. As for social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, forget it. Unless you already know a lot of people already on there, they're a non-starter. And, to be frank, I really don't see the point in spending your time posting messages for your friends online - why not just phone them or, better yet, go and see them? As for the various random characters who might decide to make friend requests, well, they're not really friends, as such, are they? The reality is that they're probably only adding you as a friend to boost the number they have, as part of some contest with other users.

All of which brings me to my recent dalliance with Twitter. Now, to be honest, I've never seen the point of Twitter. What can you say in 140 words which has any meaning? Not a lot, which is why most Twitter users spend their time telling us that they're walking their dog, drinking coffee, taking a dump or having a wank. Actually, if they did the latter, some of the streams might actually be interesting. As it is, it's just another application for that online community of middle class twats who think that the minutiae of their lives is so fascinating that they have to share it. Please, don't bother. Of course, Twitter has lately been generating lots of column inches in the press due to its adoption by various celebrities. Now, much as I might like, say, Stephen Fry, I really couldn't give a toss what he's doing at any given time of day. I don't know him personally, he's not a mate or a relative and, let's face it, if he was, I'd probably keep in touch through more conventional means. Basically, it's just another ego trip for celebrity users. However, I had noticed that a couple of self-styled 'humour' sites had been using Twitter for promotional services, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I quickly found that, as with the other applications I've tried, unless you either already have friends using Twitter, or are part of a clique, or, even better, a celebrity, it is useless. Getting followers will be next to impossible. You can, of course, try following other people's Twitterings in the hope that they'll reciprocate, but as I found most of them to be utter drivel, I really couldn't bring myself to do this. Nevertheless, I quickly found two followers materialising out of nowhere. One, a French pornographer, quickly vanished, apparently banned by Twitter. The other loitered for a while but, by this evening, I was down to zero followers. I'm just talking to myself again! To be fair, it has generated a few hits - all of them from the French pornographer. But apart from that it has been an exercise in futility. Do, I will shortly be deleting my account and leaving Twitter to the Twatterati!