What Twitter is not

I love Twitter.  I think it’s a great tool for keeping in touch, though I’m still in the middle of trying to convince friends and colleages to use it (it’s considered a bit geeky I think).

However, I just removed my first “follows”, because that well-known person was simply regurgitating links to articles on Truemors.com.  If I wanted to know what was on Truemors, I’d add a feed to Google Reader, but I don’t, so I haven’t.  What I want to hear on Twitter is what people are thinking, ideas they’ve had, not mindless link propagation linking to something I could add a feed for.

There is an excellent article by Chris Pirillo on 10 ways to Eliminate the Echo Chamber.  Which is well worth a read.  Blogging (and Twitter is a form of blogging) should be you posting about your own experiences and ideas, with links as appropriate to add value and context.

I also don’t want to listen to one-half of a conversation they’re having with someone else.  I want that stuff out of the main feed, and either displayed as a thread, or hidden altogether.  I don’t want Twitter to become a chatroom.  We have chatrooms and newsgroups for that, which are real-time, allow everyone to participate and can be indexed by Google for searching.  If you want to get me on the SMS/mobile aspect, then I’ll let you have that.  Even then, with 3G and widespread commercial Wi-fi coupled with devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch, that could soon start to change.

I’ll stop now, I’m getting way too big for my boots, but I really like Twitter, and what it could do if it doesn’t become polluted, as Facebook as been.  I’m worried about it, is all.

What do you want Twitter to be?