Comments on: 1 million reasons why Twitter is no better than a street corner call box

By: MK

MK — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:57:59 +0000

I was skeptical of Twitter for over a year until I began using it. I’m a developer and many developers are on it - posting great finds, tutorials, links, observations too small to blog about.

With Twitter I can ask the question to the massive company like Microsoft or Adobe and they have people manning the ‘twittersphere’ for such questions.

I have found it to be an invaluable learning resource as well as flat out real-time 2-way entertainment … something the phone, TV, print cannot give me at this point.

Is the technology new? Not really, but previously SMS’ing 50K or 5 million at once was something only the phone companies could do. Not anyone can. If you cannot see the power for learning, marketing and the potential for this technology to make people themselves the “content” you will one day in the near future.

By: Andrew Burnett

Andrew Burnett — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:56:26 +0000

Celebrities on twitter, don’t get me started!

If Kutcher really wanted to he could donate 10 times as many mosquito nets and if he was truly charitable he’d do it without any fanfare. Charity has been a huge part of my life as my father was a fundraiser for Barnardo’s, the missuse of charity for personal promotion never ceases to sicken me. I didn’t even hear that Kutcher had any charitable intentions in doing it which further proves it was secondary in the whole plot.

I’m sorry to read about the loss of your mother Wayne, I lost mine in 2001 & it is the singlemost significant event of my life.

By: Peter Fletcher

Peter Fletcher — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:41:27 +0000

Hi Wayne

Just thought I’d chime in to avert a possible misconception.

You state: “What really galled me was someone comparing the one million follower non-event to putting a man on the moon”. I believe that person was me in a tweet earlier today and in which I also mused “[I] wonder how often that will get quoted.” The “man on the moon” quote - “It is like putting a man on the moon. This is changing media forever” - was verbatim from Kutcher who made the statement in a video of his “victory” and in which he questioned the ongoing dominance of old media.

As you rightly point out comparing Twitter with putting a man on the moon is indeed a stretch of the imagination. But what I took Kutcher as meaning was this event should be seen by old media as the day when new media arrived as a force to be reckoned with. Whether or not he’s correct I guess only time will tell.