Sometimes I feel as if I showed up late to the Web 2.0/Social Networking party. While I’ve known about most of the developments in this area since their inception, I didn’t actively participate. Since starting this blog, however, I’ve found it necessary to become more active with these technologies and concepts, which has led to the daunting task of playing “catch-up.” Thankfully, however, not every “new thing” needs my attention beyond a casual read. So, what’s the latest “new thing” I’ve moved from my “to-know” list to the trash can? Twitter.

Twitter bills itself as “a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?” That one simple question, in my opinion, begs an equally simple question: Who cares, and who wants to know? Take a close look at Twitter and you’ll soon see it’s nothing more than a glorified instant messaging (IM) application minus the chat capabilities. You can basically achieve the same results if you just keep your status message updated on your IM client of choice. Of course, your IM status message is hardly the place to wax poetically about whatever crosses your mind, but we have blogging for that. Right?

Twitter is just interesting enough to generate buzz, which in turn leads to hype. People join and tell their friends, and they tell their friends, etc. Eventually the sheer lack of value comes to the surface and before you know it Twitter fades into the background sustained only by its most obsessive compulsive users.

Sorry Twitter fans but Twitter, as Mat Balez noted in recent blog post “RIP Twitter (2007 – 2007)“, is on track to an early grave. For the rest of you, don’t twit that you’re not using Twitter. There are far better things in the area of Web 2.0/Social Networking that deserve your attention. Scratch Twitter from your “to-know” list and move on.

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