BLOGS!!!!!!!!! are so last decade

[Mystery Meat II]

As for Facebook: you get out of it what you want. Some people use it as a repository for their kids' pictures and accomplishments. Some people play Farmville and Mafia Wars. Some people use it like Twitter. Some people use it like a blog. Some people sign on and forget about it. Most people do a combination thereof.

It's easy enough to weed out/hide the stuff you don't like and take what you want. I hide the Farmville notifications and the kiddie deification and let the Overheard in the Newsroom and Fake AP Stylebook entries flow unfettered onto my live feed.

Just because (general) you might not get it or want it doesn't make it unusable. Even the mere act of having a presence on Facebook and Twitter is good for news gathering organizations, if only to note that we're not living in some land of the lost where we don't acknowledge technology past the printing press.

I do believe there's some level of mistrust and/or disdain for social media among certain circles here. BLOGS! and Ms. Lovely and Talented are board memes for a reason. And yeah, some gotta-have-its have turned out to be better-off-not-havings (podcasts). But the day is coming when print-on-paper will go the way of the Dumont Network and the automat. Better to learn to stop worrying and love the atomic bomb.

 

[jagtrader]

I don't understand Twitter. It doesn't seem like an ideal toy for someone who enjoys writing.

Most Twitter accounts I've read from journalists include a lot of pithy, sarcastic comments to other followers or inside jokes that don't make any sense to the average person reading. You have to sift through a lot of garbage to find reporting substance. I don't get the appeal.

 

[Herbert Anchovy]

I don't understand Twitter. It doesn't seem like an ideal toy for someone who enjoys writing.

Most Twitter accounts I've read from journalists include a lot of pithy, sarcastic comments to other followers or inside jokes that don't make any sense to the average person reading. You have to sift through a lot of garbage to find reporting substance. I don't get the appeal.

Either I'm scanning it too quickly or just not all that tuned into it to begin with, but half the time I can't tell who's talking, the twitterer or the followers.

I read Sapp's the other night and it was pure sewage, nothing of interest. Dinner plans, three-word shoutouts, dull banter. Skip.

 

[BB Bobcat]

Twitter is as good as the people you follow. Period.

Yeah, there's crap, but there's also a lot of good stuff.

I don't follow any athletes. 90 percent of people I follow are other sports journalists who know how to use Twitter (ie, not for inane personal stuff).

Facebook is past it's time IMO. Way too much crap there.

 

[Herbert Anchovy]

Facebook can be abused by people who think their lives are interesting. But for every grain of **** there, it can also surprise you. I may not give a rip about Bertha Mae's hemorrhoid but I may take some interest when she posts that there's a job opening at the company or law firm she owns.

Rich Eisen has 67,000 followers on Twitter. I don't know what's more inexplicable, that or that somebody you know who has 800 FB friends. At least Eisen is a D-list celebrity.