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Shock Revelation: Microblogging Meaningless Waste Of Time!

TechCrunch's Paul Carr just did what every media and marketing professional has dreamed of doing at least once over the past year: He (partially) disconnected. "A little over a week ago, I closed down all of my social media accounts, with the exception of Twitter, which I locked." According to Carr, "In an age when everyone and their dog is sharing every aspect of their life, being a digital recluse is the new 'Internet famous.'" But that's not the only, or even most profound, reason. Agreeing with a recent revelation by Leo Laporte, Carr notes: "People on Twitter are so busy broadcasting their own updates that they're unable or unwilling to listen to others." Indeed, as Laporte just discovered, due to a glitch in Google Buzz, several weeks of his updates had failed to reach either Buzz or Twitter -- and not one of his tens of thousands of followers had noticed, or cared.

Still, the boldest insight Carr has about social media updates is that they're entirely lacking in substance, and that to increasingly rely on them for posterity could do great harm to our culture. "140 characters," he now believes, "simply doesn't give enough depth or breadth to commit events, memories or feelings to the permanent record."

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