"Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!" – How annoying.

I consider myself to be pretty tech savvy. I like playing with the newest technologies and participating in social phenomena (derogatorily referred to as fads). I still love Facebook, though I don't really use it for fun anymore; mostly it's just another way for me to contact and communicate with people, and occasionally to passively stalk people I don't put any real effort into keeping up with.

Given my predisposition to embracing new technologies and internet fads, you'd think I'd be all over Twitter. I've read about it for years in more nerdy circles – Wired Magazine, tech blogs, etc. – but it has never really captured my interest. In fact, the more I hear about it, the more perplexing it's increasing popularity becomes to me. The major news media seems to have caught on to it in the last six months or so. I think just about every day now, you can find a story about twitter in the news. Usually when this happens, it means that the social phenomenon (a.k.a. fad) in question has already reached its peak, and is becoming increasingly crowded with bandwagon jumpers and curious but hopelessly out of touch Midwesterners (see: Myspace, Facebook, Fixed Gears). I'm just amazed that Twitter has reached this point without me. To this day, I still don't understand the appeal.

I have a few theories on why I am so disinterested:

1. None of my friends – as far as I am aware – use Twitter. Maybe the Midwest is just even slower than usual to catch on to this trend. Maybe once I know some people who use it, I'll start to follow them and I'll discover what all the fuss is about.
2. The 140 character SMS format of Twitter does not seem significantly different from the short Facebook status update, which I already use.
3. Most Twitter messages, like Facebook statuses, are extraordinarily uninteresting. (This is an assumption, since I've never actually read Twitter messages.)
4. The 140 character format is too short for most limericks.
5. If I want to peek into a celebrity's personal life, I'd much rather read a blog. And even if the celebrity in question has hired people to write their blog for them, they have probably done the same with Twitter, anyway.

It frightens me when I'm so disinterested in new technologies or internet trends, because it makes me seem like a cranky, out of touch old guy. Sometimes, though, you just have to take a stand against things that have no merit. If someone can explain the true merit of Twitter to me, I'd be happy to reconsider my position.