Jeff Jackson

I realized recently I have become the old man Twitter user that complains Twitter was not was. I found Twitter as a great place to share information, connect to friends and colleagues, and discover great resources. I was an evangelist for Twitter teaching people how to use it, conducting webinars, and even drafting a users guide for higher education professionals.  As Twitter grew so did the use of other services that started clogging my Twitter stream with irrelevant content which has slowly eroded my experience.

Foursquare: I’m honestly not a check-in fan, but I have started using Foursquare to mark significant places or event I want to remember. It is not connected to my Twitter account. It has become a megaphone for people to broadcast moments of there lives with no interest of real conversation. You are encouraged to check in and share wherever you go regardless of how mundane or uninteresting the check-in. For example here are the most recent check-ins in my Twitter stream. 

• Target
• 6 restaurant
• Park (They are the mayor)
• Apt Complex 
• Sporting Event

Of the 10 events (in the past 30 minutes) the sporting event was cool, and I think worth sharing. I could understand how people would want to talk and have a discussion around that event. I do not see the same about checking in at McDonalds. 

GetGlue: I you have not used GetGlue it is Foursquare for TV. People “checkin” when they start watching a tv show. It does not crowd my twitter stream like Foursquare, but it appears to continue to gain steam. I thought about using it to check into smart people show that are on the History channel or Discovery but I do not want to be disingenuous. 

Before I go too far into GetGlue I will make a confession: I tweet a fair about about college football games. Working in higher education I feel most of my followers have a similar interest, and it is a small number compared to my overall twitter count. Since I have no interest in Glee, <insert any reality show>, or awards shows there are times that twitter is rendered useless. 

Things that tell me how far you run: Over 3 years ago in the early days of Twitter I had a iPhone app that tracked and reported my bike rides. At the time there were very few higher education professionals on Twitter and a significant percentage of my followers were cyclist. Since that has changes I no longer report my stats publicly because it is not relevant to my Twitter community. I may talk about going on a bike ride, the deer I saw, or a picture of something I found interesting.

There is a theme among my complaints: they are not native to Twitter. They are entered into a separate application which is then broadcasted to twitter.  They rarely add value and the downed out the better content. 

I love Google +, but I have a fear they will open it up where people can post the same content there as in twitter and facebook; but that is for a different blog post.

Reasons I am starting to hate Twitter:

Foursquare

GetGlue

Things that tell me how far you run

I will explain more later

Yesterday I found a link via the Twitter of people that complained about their Christmas gifts. The tweets are outrageous, greedy, and ungrateful but the responses are what shocked me.  First lets backtrack: It appears this guy Jon Hendren (@fart on twitter) found people that complained about their gift, or more specifically not getting an iPhone, etc. @fart has over 14K followers so his RTs gave the original 140 characters a large voice.

This leads to several blog post, video podcast, and large backlash to the seemingly unselfish gift recipients. Myself included: I posted the link on my facebook that simply said “These people suck.” I did not think much of it, then last night I decided to see who these people were. I randomly picked a few accounts and discovered some had been closed and other set to private. The first one I found was @SeanMcmaster1 who’s original tweet to 92 followers (as of today, not sure about the 25th) said

 My parents are the worst mother Fucking parents in the world fuck you mom and dad for not getting me a Iphone. FUCK YOU. FML #Iphone

His twitter stream blew up, and he has been RTing the 100 of messages strangers have been sending him telling him to go kill himself, calling him a faggot, and sending him link like this one. Honestly that is the mild language. He says he was being sarcastic and did not mean it. That is what sucks about 140 characters and text, we sometimes miss the nuance and context.

What is worse an ungrateful selfish tweet, or the attack mob mentality from trolling strangers.

Then I look up this guy who is in far better shape than me. He said..

Other than getting a Camero and iPad this Christmas sucks.

Turns out he is active duty military and has been away from his family for 3 year. He purchased a new car and iPad on his own but missed his family. 

You can watch his video here.

;

Yesterday when I first saw this I was going to be another example in my Digital Citizenship keynote. Then you see an active duty military give a stream of conscious tweet that get taken out of context (or placed in the wrong context) the lesson is on us.

So here it is…Stop RTing random crap without having a better understanding of what is being said. I’m sure some of the people were sincere in their ungratefulness, and they are not all in the Navy like Mr Bernard, but is that really deserving of slurs and wishing death on people?