Tell YC: The Diminishing Marginal Utility of Twitter

Lots of folks are questioning the marginal utility of Twitter at the very front of what it is. Ostensibly, Twitter is a beacon for what you are doing, should you decide to use it. It's not for everyone, neither is the Internet, neither is an education in molecular physics. This is something I think a lot of people don't yet understand about the Internet, yet they make use of it every day. A new service is out and curiosity begs that they take it for a spin, but ignorance begs that they find a reason to share with us their complaints why it will fail. The number one reason I'm beginning to notice is this "I can't see myself using it very much, so it must not have a place on the sacred data grids of the Internet". Sure it's by no means every expressed this explicitly, but I feel confident that many people can see this sort of mentality floating around Twitter. If it's not for you, then honestly: it's not. Move on. I made the comment yesterday that there is no archetype for the utility of the Internet. There isn't a gold standard for what you are supposed to do, and how you make the best use of it for what you need. Take a moment and try to realize that about Twitter. Some companies use it to keep customers updated without boring them with walls of text. The 140 character limit lets them get out a quick update, you scan it, read it and mentally digest it and then move on. Some folks use it to alert their friends "Hey, I picked up the milk, on my way". For them, that's a lot easier then calling just to utter a few short words. In this case, it alerts the appropriate parties that whatever task had to be done was in fact done in the simplest way possible. From that, they move on to the next. Can you tell what the theme here is? Move on people. Move on. Twitter is beautiful by virtue of it's incredible ease of use, and simplistic UI. It's not meant to be the grandest invention of all time, and it never will be. It just happens that some people have connected with business partners and friends with it (such as myself), other people just find it as a very handy system of keeping people up to date with a situation that people need to know about. Imagine having to 2 way, or even 3 way call a number of people just to inform them that you wont be able to make it to the concert. Heck, even calling one person involves establishing a call tree and after a substantial period of time, everyone will eventually realize Dave isn't showing up. Maybe I'm exaggerating the fact to say that if they were all using Twitter on their phones, they'd know immediately. But they'll move on. They know what they need to know and the problem is solved. Don't make it anything it doesn't need to be. If Twitter doesn't work for you, there's really nothing you can do about that. Twitter isn't going away, the dedicated users aren't going to tip toe around semantics, and Michael Arrington isn't going to shut up about it (cut me some slack, we needed a bit of comic relief there), the rest of us will move on when something big happens. Everyone else will probably find out when it's too late.