"In essence, Facebook users didn’t think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive."

OR they got bored and spammed to death such that they stopped using facebook. (My personal experience)

Thus the core of the problem: if you don't "get" Facebook/Twitter, it doesn't help to read about other people who do.

The article explains how it works -- ambient awareness and all that -- but it doesn't explain why I'd want that, if I'm not one who already "gets it". Why do I want 1000 asymmetric "weak ties"?

I have noticed that the people who use twit/book the most are those with cell phones. If you don't have a Blackberry welded to your hip, tweeting "I'm making a sandwich" has way too much overhead.

I like Twitter, but I think Facebook is horrible, a terrible waste of time, it's like LinkedIn for teenagers imo. This comes from a guy that has also stopped using chat tools (excepting for the days I might need them), so please excuse me for being on the very unpopular side.

But, as a look at Facebook's numbers would show, they began using it in far greater numbers.

I think that adding the feed and the apps forced me to use Facebook the way it was meant to be used. I got rid of all but 70 friends, people I cared about, and suddenly it became a very productive way to plan out events and talk to friends in the middle of class. No spam, no feed updates that I don't care about.

This "ambient awareness" thing is a phenomenon that exists only in the bay area... the rest of the world still lives in a twitbook free world. Maybe this article is slightly out of touch with whats really going on.

And why would you want to "constrain your identity"? The ability to revinvent yourself is a great gift.

Ah-ah-ah. It also happens on every last college campus in America.

Why not directly link to the actual article?

And he quoted quite a lot from the article too - too much to claim fair use I think.

He might have reproduced that much content due to the NYT registration nag screens

I finally gave in and made myself a twitter account. Now what?

Twiddle thumbs... whistle a bit...

On a more serious note, there was a link here to the "best" 100 Twitter accounts. That might help. Or not. I dunno: I stopped using Twitter.

I only made an account for myself when I saw that I had friends that were having interesting conversations in there. I don't see how having an account for you alone could be useful if you have nobody to talk to (it's like having an msn account if you haven't any useful contacts... twitter is as good as your contacts so beware of adding random people).

See, I just use my twitter account for random nano-fiction. Same for more facebook profile. Far more interesting than what I normally do, which usually boils down to "Still haven't conquered world. Damn."

Also, it gives people a conversation starter with me, usually with the word "What the hell?" beginning it.

oh I get it...I just don't feel like broadcasting to the world every little thing that happens in my life

I understand but the counter point is, how big is your ego? to think that the whole world would follow?

The way I use it is by not logging in at all. I've set it to email me on events, and I click the links in the mails. Other than occasionally looking at event pictures, I don't even look at Facebook pages.

Oh. I get it now. So obvious when it's laid out like this...