Twittering Ants: Social Droning Is For Insects.

Ants are interesting insects. They always show up where we don't want them because of their vast network - a social network - with a purpose of maintaining their society. Food is found, messages sent, trails followed, and food brought back to the lair is used to feed the entire society and the queen ant - the ant in charge of the future society. It is a very nice, neat centralized system that keeps the insects going, usually to the displeasure of mankind. 'As industrious as an ant', they say.

The reason I bring this up is because, after reading Roland's post on twitter testing and commenting on it, I decided to sleep in the hammock last night, listening to a music stream as I drifted off. While listening to the nice, relaxing stream, I recounted the many events of the day - all day. Phone calls. Lunch with a realtor. Pulling weeds in the yard, taking some pictures, more phone calls, troubleshot the water pump, wrote a few entries here and there, participating in email lists and not even having sufficient time for the important personal emails, it occurred to me yet again - time. The beauty of the ant colony is that there is a focus. The downside of the ant colony is that they don't get time off.

The downside of social networking that I have seen in most uses is that there is no focus. You can twitter up a storm about who you're talking to, what color your underwear is and who your last sexual fantasy is about. You can name drop, name drop-kick, whatever. What does that have to do with my life? Why must I read that - and worse - spend time twittering back? Aren't instant messaging, email, blog entries with RSS, Facebook, Linked In, Second Life, SMS text messages, mobile phones and smoke signals enough for you folks? Shall I recount my pubic hair every day and leave an accurate count on twitter every day for you such that you know more about me? Is that what this is? And to what end?

Now, as Roland pointed out - there are valid uses. Most certainly, I cannot disagree. There certainly are - teams sharing information in real time may have use of Twitter, but - I hate to say this - but Skype, SMS combined with Email/RSS - those work just as well. What is twitter? I don't know. The Twitter website is less than descriptive. From what I have gleaned from those that use it and advocate it, it allows you to send text messages to a website. Wow. I actually know something about it. Let's name drop. I had a friend show the ARC concept to Scoble years ago, but he never responded. I bet you that Scoble twitters, huh? Same concept. Wasn't good enough for saving lives, but I'm sure he's twittering up a storm about every place he breaks the Terms of Service. Brilliant. Good that we have our priorities straight. Behold, your celebrity. He cries when he sees something Microsoft is going to announce, and you all buzz like ants. What did they announce? That little open source thing. Very touching. Cry me a river, I will go kayaking. That might be entertaining and a fun use of my time.

Focus. What is the point of this stuff for the average person? Has it replaced the phone call? Is it able to be used globally? What is the point for most people? If it is derived from twit, the definition of twit seems to be a fair definition of its popular use. The etymology definition of 'twit' is even more enlightening, especially when you come across some of the twitter crosstalk people have.

But yes, I am sure that there are proper uses of Twitter, just as there is proper use of any technology. But it boils down to this - if it does not save me time, it's useless. If it is a time-sink, it's detrimental - I have enough time-sinks, thank you. You want to impress me? Save me time. All these social networking tools, which are pretty much reinventions of pre-existing tools with no true value added without an financially rewarding users for their content creation, are just gimmicks for someone else to make money off of my time, energy and creativity.

Twitter might do that for me someday. Maybe. So might Facebook. But when it all comes down to it, Skype, email and RSS are all I really use - and all I really need. Oh, and del.icio.us is helpful for saving bookmarks, too. Flickr is where I archive my photos, but I don't use it to socialize really. Beyond all that? Blah.

So, I suppose this is why I tell the twitters to twitter off. I got stuff to do, and you don't have to have a flashlight up my rectum every time I do something - and vice versa.

Twitter this:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

— T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

If you're going to twitter, make it for something worthwhile - as you should for any technology. Sure, you can use twitter for fun. But frankly, I'd rather lay in a hammock and listen to music while thinking rather than just playing textual tennis in a warped version of multiplayer Notepad.

If this keeps up, someone will need to invent a time machine.