a) Cyberstalking celebrities, A-list or not
b) Participating in giveaways or sweepstakes
c) Hosting giveaways or sweepstakes
d) Thinking aloud when no one cares
e) Hoping that someone cares about your mundane thoughts.

Jin

Do you have “auto-follow” settings still on?
(maybe you didn’t actually “follow” these people..)

OR…

Sounds to me like you should re-examine who you are following and why you are following them.

Just unfollow the people that spew mindless drivel.

Different people have different reasons and different motivations for twittering.. and some people REALLY don’t know how.. (those “michael jackson social media types”)..

just a thought..

No, I certainly don’t think Twitter is dying, or going anywhere anytime soon really. I mean, it was John Mayer who said it, not me, and you don’t want to get me started on him. I totally agree with you on the changes Twitter has brought about, that certainly can’t be ignored, nor should it.

I suppose I have become dissatisfied with my own Twitter experience which is, in the end, completely under my control. I can turn the firehose off and walk away, that’s one possible solution, just not really the one I’m looking for. It seems as though I’ve stumbled onto the crowded playground of Twitter, you know the one with all the screaming kids? Well, I guess I just want to go back inside and play…

The news of Twitter’s death is greatly exaggerated. Seriously, it could die over night. That’s the web ecosystem with regards to popularity. However, one thing is sure, Twitter changed the paradigm.

My facts may be off but it seems safe to say that they created the micro-blogging niche. That niche is probably here to stay though it will likely evolve.

If we’ve learned anything from the social media that have gone before it is that “it’s difficult to make good projects work well and it’s easy to make idealistic ones turn into hell”. I would personally be very wary of any tool built on non-exclusive participation.

I know, that sounds elitist and elitist is bad in pop culture. But most social media concepts are based upon an idealistic view that everyone will be equal and have the same amount of input. Where there are humans, this is rarely if ever the case.

Some social media are like a ponzy scheme in terms of their “added value” to each individual networking participant.

The network owner and managers gain some value from the existance and growth of the network only because they were first or “founders”. But their interests are not equal to those of the “downline” network participants who they usually do not allow to exploit the network for any real gain. In fact, there is a conflict of interest between the networking participants and the network “founder” or owner.

Networkers are attracted to the network by promises of considerable personal gain, usually through the great publicity and brand created by an ever increasing body of users.

Gowalla is great, I absolutely love it, but the social aspects are REALLY lacking. Foursquare is the same. It’s fun, and it’s great to compete for “top place” with friends, but I have yet to make any new friends through the apps, despite encountering several people who frequent the same places I do.

There are a lot of uses for these apps (Locavore is a favorite of mine), but I feel like the social aspects of these “games” are missing.

Great Post. It’s true- “expertise” comes down to experience.