Several people have tried to tell me that Twitter is an important social tool.

I see people trying to apply important communication via Twitter, but in most applications I see more compromise than improvement.

Recently, someone I know tried to use it for something rather serious: Alerting friends and family to a health emergency. Some unfortunately predictable things happened:

1. The people connected to Twitter feeds have become so accustomed to the low signal-to-noise ratio that some either missed the more important message, or they didn't read it until skimming messages much later. Twitter has become so much for junk, pointless messages, there's a sort of crying wolf paradigm.
2. The people not connected to the Twitter feed were left out of the loop. There was an expectation that someone would inform them, but it got muddled in the question each asked themselves "who's read it already and who hasn't?". In a culture of politeness, nobody wanted to double-inform anyone. Even in the most dire of situations, social communication becomes victim to its own social rules.
3. The people addicted to reading short trivial messages were oddly pleased that something important was sent this way. Regardless of tact or good taste, they determined that the problem was everyone else for not being better in tune with their beloved Twitter.

Eventually everyone was informed and the emergency subsided.

I'll be really nice and say Twitter is good for broadcasting short messages with convenience. Messages in feeds are brief and can be read at leisure via a variety of services and devices. I wouldn't use it for anything important, because by its nature it tends to lack direct feedback. Oh sure, you can Tweet right back, but generally nobody broadcasts simple feedback as we would vocalize in person, on a phone call, typed in an email or even an IM. Oddly, it's the way it's used socially that leaves out much of the feedback, because full conversations are generally not what Twitter is about.

I'm over-explaining it really. Twitter just isn't personal communication. It's publicly broadcasting realtime events. Trying to use it for anything else is like shoving a square peg into a round hole, it tends to cut the corners off.

I'd call it a fun social toy, with a few select situations where it could be used seriously but there are probably better choices if what you're saying requires any sort of action or promptness.

The other side issue is that social tools depend too much on total and complete adoption. And then once that's happened? We're putting a lot of trust into a single privately operated service. 80% adoption isn't good enough, but 90%+ becomes scary.

I hate to admit this, geek that I am, but sometimes technology doesn't solve everything.

I love Penny Arcade's take on Twitter, especially Tycho's to-the-point commentary:

I've noted that my gaming friends have reacted significantly different to the microblogging phenomena than my blogging-geek friends. Amongst the gamers, there's a collective shrug. My gf summed up the perspective:

Amongst the bloggers, it's this whole 'important' social tool concept. Doesn't that make you roll your eyes? I used to love this stuff, I don't know what's happening to me, but I'm finding myself opting out of these kind of social circles. Like Tycho, it's not that I don't see the usefulness, it's that I don't see it applied to me.

Some of my friends are shocked I don't Twitter, Facebook or use a host of other popular-at-the-moment super-connected social toys. After all, I was trying to find ways to hook my toaster up to the 'net since the early 90's (and every other thing remotely resembling an appliance since I'd heard about CMU's coke machine). I had to get bored of the obsession sooner or later I suppose. =P