Sunny in San Diego

After reading some interesting news the other day, I started to wonder about some social media web sites, companies, and so on.
What really made me wonder is the concept of Twitter. It’s fascinating yet at the same time not that big of a deal. Microblogging, so to speak, that really
seems to cater to marketing, news, and celebrities. What people do on Twitter is also done on Facebook, MySpace, their own blogs, etc. It used to be people would say more on their blogs and social sites, but ever since Twitter became huge, people post one thing across multiple sites. And it’s the same one or two sentences. Talk about redundancy. So if you follow somebody on Twitter and they are a friend on Facebook or Myspace or if you subscribe to their blog, it’s most likely you’d get the same information multiple times. The same marketing bull, the same mundane pointless update, or the same news story. That becomes a big reason to ignore or not follow somebody.

I like the idea of these short, simple and to the point excerpts. But when those excepts become the same thing on every site and there is nothing more, it becomes boring and pointless. And there are a ton of wanna be celebrities who have tons of followers who post about absolutely nothing. They create videos and post about editing them, and for the most part everything they do is nothing more than fake ads or comments for companies. Oh yeah they pretend like they have a real opinion except every other word is more or less just to get another free product or service. Or some people, especially females who are ‘broadcast journalists’, post about rather boring topics, but because a ton of geeks think some fake tech girls actually like them, it seems interesting. Most of what they post is just marketing crap with no real opinions attached. Can’t dis the masses as they say. Or there are tons of companies who jumped on the Twitter bandwagon and just seem to post random facts about nothing or many times, they just post spam as if to think that will drive people to their companies website or become interested in their products or services. The company I used to work for jumped on the Twitter bandwagon and in reality all they really seemed to post were about crappy contests or they just posted spam. No real interest in utilizing Twitter for the better good. Just a marketing ploy to spam people. A lot of companies do this and it’s rather obvious. Companies should market their products/services but it would be nice to see them actually push out opinions and ideas about their industry, competition, product/service updates, customers, etc. Instead we get two sentences of nothing but some lame free ad that says nothing. How useless.

Twitter is great for quick updates of breaking news stories(whether from news sources or individuals), interesting facts and updates about real company information, or interesting tidbits about interesting topics. Instead of weekly or monthly email newsletters or blog subscriptions, you can get updates from experts on a daily basis. Real information from real people with real knowledge and opinions. You might not always agree with them but at least you feel like their is a real flow going on, not some fake spam like posting scenario. But except for a few, what is mostly posted on Twitter will be useless in a day or two. Yes for people who stalk celebrity info, it can be a great service and I”m sure there is a business model in that sense, but for everything else, the business model is just one big spam scam. If I disappeared for a month or two and came back and logged into my Twitter account, I wouldn’t have missed anything real for the most part. Most of what is posted is just jargon that isn’t important. Yeah how many times do we need to read, “Oh I posted a new video about a product a billion other people posted the same damn opinion about.” And from somebody who isn’t an expert and is either a fanboy/gal or a hater. Every company seems to have both these days and every one seems to have opinion-less and fact-less posts about every product released.

Anyway, the founders of Twitter will make a killing(and probably already have) when all is said and done, but for the investors, the proof is in the pudding. Teenagers and Kids aren’t using Twitter. Hell according to reports half of kids don’t even know what it is. And these are the same kids who are addicted to Facebook. So much for the theory that Twitter is such a great innovative technology people can’t get enough of. It’s become nothing more than another place for businesses to spam constantly and Celebrities to push out nonsense. Or a place for people with no real talent to attempt to get their 15 minutes of fame. Yeah the masses will follow, but just like anything else, the masses soon move onto something else. And if the younger generation isn’t using the product now, they sure aren’t going to use it when nobody else uses it.

It was a great concept and I’ve enjoyed using it over the years and will keep using it to keep up to date with news stories and some groups I belong to, but other than that it’s rather pointless. And unless they figure out other things to add to their services, Twitter will one day be like many of the other web technology sites and just disappear. Hey they might still be around, but just like MySpace these days, nobody gives a crap about it anymore. You always wonder about some of these companies who get millions, if not billions, in investment money yet they never seem to make a dime. I guess that’s why most of these companies never go public anymore they just get sold or refuse to sell. It’s because they have no real business model and no real way to make a return on investment. Put half these things in front of the SEC and some stockholders board and I bet many times these companies would wind up worse than Enron or Worldcom. A lot of crap about nothing. The whole Dot Com “new business model” theories that were nothing more than a load of shit. Except back then those companies actually went public and the SEC turned a blind eye. Kind of like the whole Wall Street and banking scams that crashed the economy. Who knows.

Maybe Twitter will learn and add more features and ideas to their great concept. If they don’t, who really would miss them in the long run? It’s not like they really changed the world for the better or added something new. When you aren’t attractive to the younger generation and people of my generation and the one after me has the attention span of a gnat, then you are in big trouble. And so far the teens and younger could care less about Twitter. Not a very good sign. Not when it comes to technology.

When you think too much the headaches marinate. But sometimes thinking too much can be a good thing. Maybe a great thing.

A good friend once told me you can’t always just chase the money. This same friend also told me no matter how far you run or how out there you become, you can never outrun yourself. I ignored that advice years ago. Call it being a stubborn arrogant 19 year old kid who liked this one particular girl too much. Blame it on this 21 year old girl who liked me too much. The odd couple we were, yet we weren’t even together. Who knows why things happen the way they do.

I smashed my fiero into a dozen oak trees going like 100mph around a ninety degree turn showing off to her. She ruined her reputation hanging with a young punk rocker with no money.

To this day I have no clue what the hell she saw in me. What’s weird is I really never met somebody like her again. Maybe we were just young and stupid. But she accepted me for me even with all my damn issues. Nobody else really did since or before, not even my ex wife. I mean I was a broke punk rock kid going to college making like 5 bucks an hour. She was the girl every guy fell in love with and drueled over.

We met in college and pretty much hung out over the next few years. But like most things in life times change. I moved away and so did she and we lost contact over the years. I did bump into her and her mom a couple years later and we were going to stat in touch. We never did.

I’ve always been a person chasing technology, chasing money, chasing bigger and better things. I’ve also been a person who wanted to travel the world. No money and very little time off as a contractor meant my only option was to find gigs or jobs in various cities. It was fun. But was I ever happy? I do like money but I’m also an adrenaline junkie and a person with multiple interests. So who knows what to think.

So recently I had a conversation with my roommate about various things. Funny how certain things come full circle. The running from problems and just jumping for money advice was front and center again. Except this time I might have to listen. Maybe I’m not as stubborn or arrogant or dumb as I used to be all those years ago. Maybe I’m just getting older. Whatever it is I need to start doing things I’m more passionate about, even if it’s just part time for now. Or even if it’s just as a hobby.

Just do it as they say and stop letting certain people cloud my life and ruin my days and weeks and months. I’m not getting any younger. I used to have all these ideas and plans. I lost those feelings for a long while. It’s time to find those feelings and passions once again.

I do wonder whatever happened to that girl I once knew all those years ago. Is she married? How many kids does she have? And what does she look like now? It’s funny I’m the one wondering. What with facebook and myspace and Twitter and all the other Internet tools it should be easy to find somebody. Problem is we met through some weird fate circumstances the first time, then bumped into one another again a couple semesters later because of some English 2 class. Then we just hit it off from that point.

Funny though as I don’t believe in fate or any of that crap anymore yet it was like fate meeting her and I guess I figure if we were ever to connect again, it would be up to some random fate. Yet I don’t believe in fate so go figure. Regardless I’d say I never met anybody as beautiful inside and out as her. But I guess there is a place and time for everything. Wrong place and wrong time then.