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Comments

• [1] Claire Lea from Ohio August 19, 2009 - 10:04AM

  I love having Twitter and even follow complete strangers who have similar interests (geocaching, birding, cycling) plus a few celebs and of course friends. It is fun and can definitely be challenging. To express a thought in 140 characters can be difficult. I recommend Scott Simon of NPR for being the best at it from those I follow.

  
  
• [2] MS from Long Island August 19, 2009 - 10:13AM

  My love of Twitter began when I started to follow my favorite cyclist, Lance Armstrong. During the Tour de France It mushroomed from there to follow other professional cyclists in the race -- Levi Leipheimer, George Hincapie, Brad Wiggins, Christian V.d.V, etc. I felt as if I was a fly on the wall of the various cycling teams during the tour and it was a blast to check in each day. Now I follow NPR celebs and others that I find interesting. Is there wisdom in these folks' tweets? Maybe, but more often not. It's just plain fun.

  
  
• [3] NC from NYC August 19, 2009 - 11:24AM

  Twitter is actually a major source of news for me-- following CNN, NYTimes, and Huff Post. Plenty of Obama news, and White House streams. I also get my celebrity news/gossip. So it helps to offset my limited TV consumption.

  
  
• [4] Robert August 19, 2009 - 11:53AM

  All of these anecdotes aren't exactly selling twitter for me. I'm not that into getting flooded by short quippy comments. What was his eureka moment when he realized that he could get certain info from twitter that he couldn't elsewhere?

  
  
• [5] Caitlin from Jersey City August 19, 2009 - 11:54AM

  One thing I love about Twitter over Facebook is that if someone follows you, you don't have to follow them back. It doesn't have the drama of "un-friending" someone.

  
  
• [6] JP from The Garden State August 19, 2009 - 11:56AM

  When does the USB cranium patch cord come out so I can twitter without running into telephone poles while walking down the street and never have to speak directly to another human being again? Oh, and is there a fact checking button on twitter or a BS button?

  
  
• [7] Inquisigal from Brooklyn, NY August 19, 2009 - 11:56AM

  I dunno - I'm not sold. Are people so lazy they can't go on to the Internet and Google the sources they're interested in? Email and Facebook updates already clog my inbox - I don't want to be invading by more things I don't have time to read.

  
  
• [8] Steven from New York, NY August 19, 2009 - 11:57AM

  I think your objection to the word "replace" is silly. I suppose that, since technologies don't replace each other, we still get news from the telegraph and the pony express!

  
  
• [9] Todd Ivins from New York City August 19, 2009 - 11:59AM

  I agree with the last caller.

  Telegrams. . . the telegraph.

  
  
• [10] Frank S August 19, 2009 - 12:01PM

  ...wouldn't you say that phones REPLACED telegraph...? And email replaced fax machines...? And computers replaced typewriters?

  
  
• [11] allie912 from Richmond, VA August 19, 2009 - 12:07PM

  I'm proud to say I'm one of David's co-authors of The World According to Twitter! However, unlike David, I have only 100+ followers. Therefore when I ask a question the likelihood of getting a usable response is much less. I follow about the same number (100) and have focused my list to include people in my profession, columnists who interest me, some news sources and people from my local area. As a result I get a manageable number of tweets and very few time wasters in the bunch! BTW allie912 is my twitter accountand I am a school librarian.

  
  
• [12] Ralph Cutler from Brooklyn August 19, 2009 - 12:08PM

  Just a brief response about replacement and your last callers point about polaroids. My girlfriend takes polaroids all the time. Film is still produced due to a small but strong niche market.

  
  
• [13] josh from brooklyn August 19, 2009 - 12:08PM

  Yes. And CD's ARE being replaced by downloading music, as proved by the closings of Tower Records and the Virgin Megastores.

  
  
• [14] Frank S August 19, 2009 - 12:13PM

  And, if we look across demographic groups, we do see a precipitous decline in use of email as use of text messaging increases among progressively younger people.

  Don't want to dwell on a minor point, but new technology generally replaces old technology, or at very least dramatically changes the ways (and amount) old technology are utilized.

  
  
• [15] Frank S August 19, 2009 - 12:17PM

  To my last point, TV did not 'replace' radio...however, the format of mainstream radio programming was changed by TV. Radio was no longer a long-format, gather-the-family-around entertainment medium. Radio became music, news and talk. Therefore the types of people and corporations associated with radio changed, and the very business model had to evolve.

  
  
• [16] DMI from Connecticut August 21, 2009 - 11:08AM

  Love David Pogue. I follow him on twitter and he is the most informative and entertaining, which is why he has so many followers. I control my tweets by only looking at them online and not thru text messages on my phone. I know folks who also do a good bit of business networking on Twitter. I tend to prefer a more personal, face-to-face method but it is just one tool of many we entrepreneurs can use to keep our businesses front and center.

  David is a great consumer reporter and a terrifically entertaining fellow.