What's the trick? Twitter is useful for the media and Facebook is not. I think it's that simple. You can now write a news article where every quote is pulled from twitter. Nobody is doing that with facebook.
amazing Jedi mind tricks for twitter is, they figured out how the influentials matter the most for their platform. They collaborated with actors/musicians initially to take it off.
Useful? Why would I care what xXNinjaGuy2938Xx's opinion on foreign policy is? Twitter strikes me as a very anti-intellectual medium because of the 140 character limitation. How do you convey a nuanced, complex opinion in such a fashion?
He said useful for the media. You know, the catchall term for content publishers whose stock in trade is the soundbite, and the traditional outlets of which are getting their lunch eaten by the newer "blogger" type that makes their living by being 10 minutes quicker with a scoop? If you reflect on it for a moment you can probably figure out how Twitter is useful in this kind of world. However if you're having trouble, just search Arrington's and Scoble's archives from 2007 and 2008 and you will get more explanation than you could ever desire or probably tolerate.
> Twitter strikes me as a very anti-intellectual medium because of the 140 character limitation.
There's the old saying that goes something like "Nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American people." Less cynically, nobody wants to be intellectual all the time, or we would see peer reviewed blogs with internal citations all over the place.
>How do you convey a nuanced, complex opinion in such a fashion?
Twitter is a broadcast medium. It's not intended to do what you state above.
I personally use it when I'm curious what certain people think about an event I'm watching. It's fun sometimes knowing in real time what someone who's opinion you actually care about, thinks about an event you just witnessed.
NBA players are on it, some cool geeks and bloggers...maybe you're just not the intended audience.
That said, I do think twitter's importance is overstated.
