In article ,
Sacha wrote:

There is considerable evidence that neither are used for anything
beyond wasting time, idle gossip and so on.

And that last sentence, Nick, explains why this group and others will
die the death. Of course, there's a lot of nonsense on Twitter and on
Facebook. There is on here, to when we're in a punny mood. Both can
be avoided quite easily by being specific in who you follow and by
ignoring or blocking those you don't wish to see, or to have follow
you. I speak as one who was vehemently anti joining either.
Eventually, I was persuaded/bullied by one of my daughters to use both.
My personal presence on Fb is quite slight and the Nursery has its own
'page' attached to that. On Twitter, I post as myself and I make
certain that we follow or we are followed by, only those relevant to
our interests. In effect, it is little different to a newsgroup but
it is much more widely used. I wouldn't announce my absence from home
on Twitter, but nor would I on here. ALL are open to the public gaze
to just the same degree. The only difference is frequency of use. I
post no private photos or infomation to my Fb account and I discuss no
private matters. BUT the stimulus is far greater because of the
frequency of use and the fact that most people on both are younger than
most denizens of urg. I'm not pushing for either as in abandoning urg
but I am saying that looking at blogs might, at the very least, makes a
welcome change from repetitive discussions on why someone's veg aren't
growing, why a lawnmower won't start, or why michaelmas daisies aren't
doing too well for the 5th year running. Perhaps we could consider
widening our horizons simply by reading what others have to say in
blogs. There is no commitment!

Hmm. Methinks that was a little above 140 characters :-) My point
about twitter is that it is inherently limited to semi-frivolous
uses for that reason alone. At best, it could be used to point
out a Web page.

My points stand, however, though perhaps I should have added
"marketing" to the list of uses. I am NOT, however, basing that
on hearsay, but on what the facebook users I know have told me.
There probably isn't any reason that it couldn't be used for
serious purposes (some other such systems, like linkedin, are)
but the reports I hear are that it isn't.

And I do look at blogs, fairly regularly, though I dislike the
one-way nature of them. That is why I don't run one myself - I have
never been particularly interested in rabbitting on without active
debate. My objection to this one was that it was painful to read
and I have a lot else going on.

Regards,
Nick Maclaren.