serious questions for LJ friends who use Twitter

[greenshadows]

Hi. I promise: I'm trying not to be hostile, I just have real questions about what this thing is and why I shouldn't see it as an affront to "normal" LJ posts

Comments

[ravenfeather]

I skip the twitters.. fortunately there are only three on my list, and they STILL do REAL posts.

[greenshadows]

I've only got one or two that are now pretty much all Twitter all the time, but it's a trend I expect will continue.

[ravenfeather]

Two of mine have so many symbols in them.. it is hard to make out what they are trying to say..

[missprune]

I don't even know what it is and I feel SO out of the loop. :o)

[greenshadows]

*smile* stay loop-less, Miss P.! :)

[archane]

Using twitter lets me do a couple of things:
(1) Continue to let people know I'm alive in the tiny periods of time I have open
(2) Use either the interwebs or text messaging to update
(3) Have an excuse (140 character limit) not to bore people to tears with uninteresting stories of school
(4) Update my LJ friends and my non-LJ-but-Twitter friends with the same push of a button, making it more efficient.

The question of how it fits in politely with the LJ experience is precisely why I use a cut for my tweets. That makes it as inoffensive as possible (along with not including replies to other people's tweets) while still giving me some sort of update, because otherwise my updates since starting school would either be pre-written (my Memoriam posts, for example) or almost non-existent.

It's also why I put up a poll in December (which I notice you didn't participate in :-p ) about whether people on my Friends List would be offended, or interested.

[greenshadows]

Yeah, I didn't want to voice my dissent in your poll - I didn't figure it would dissuade you, anyway, and I also never want to tell people how they should manage their own LJs. I thought I might just get over it, too, but the other day I encountered three twitter posts in a row on my friends page, and it just bummed me out.

You and others have certainly educated me about what it is - thanks for that. Sounds useful, possibly even good in and of itself, but I don't like it on LJ. Just my opinion, which has not changed. :)

[archane]

I've had a couple of people since then tell me how useful they find it for staying updated, but at the time of my poll, it very well might have dissuaded me, since (1) the only person who voiced a strong opinion is also on Twitter and could have followed that way, and (2) I realize just how blindingly annoying Twitter posts can be, and even though it's my journal, I don't have any desire to offend my friends. :)

I do hope that putting it behind a cut and (if you read them) omitting any "@" replies at least mitigates the hideousness?

[greenshadows]

I do hope that putting it behind a cut and (if you read them) omitting any "@" replies at least mitigates the hideousness?

It does. :)

[dotcombabe]

I'm so glad you asked this because I've been wondering the exact same thing. There are a few people on my list who post these and I never read them.

[greenshadows]

I defend their right to twitter - on LJ, the moon, wherever - and my right to scroll on by. Everybody wins. :)

*sigh* though I miss their real posts :/

[lblanchard]

I have one person I read who tweets, but she puts them all behind a cut tag and titles them "XXXXX's twitterings -- too inane for LJ."

That strikes me as a reasonable compromise; I confess I've never read any of them. I did set up a Twitter account for myself just in case I ever want to use it (we library types like to know what the kidz are doing), but I suspect that by now I have misplaced/forgotten both my username and my password.

[greenshadows]

I also have one twitterer who puts 'em behind a cut. I would never ask anyone to do that but yeah, I do think it's very polite.