• Wired, Wednesday, June 3, 2009 11:45 AM

Wired's Julian Dibbell argues that no one really understands the point of Twitter, as knowing how people use the microblogging service isn't the same thing as knowing why they use it. Indeed, says Dibbell, "most of the uses Twitter has been adapted to were already well-served by existing online tools -- blogs, email, instant-messaging -- and it's not entirely obvious how the subcompact message lengths and other constraints of microblogging represent an improvement." This makes nailing down Twitter's comparative advantage somewhat difficult.

"I think there's a question whether Twitter is going to be the thing everybody does, in the way that using IM or cell phones is," says Slate tech columnist Farhad Manjoo. He notes that broadcasting one's personal status on a regular basis is "a very alien concept," and while he's not inclined to write Twitter off completely, he's not convinced that once the hype wears off, what remains of the microblogging service will amount to more than a niche pastime, either.

On the other hand, Dribbell wonders if Twitter matters more than anyone's imagining in the same way that TV was written off in its early days as a time waster with few redeeming social or cultural values. "By forcing users to commit their thinking to the bite-size form of the public tweet, Twitter may be giving a powerfully productive new life to a hitherto underexploited quantum of thought: The random, fleeting observation," he says.

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