• by Joe Mandese , June 23, 2009

Shawn Gold is following me now, and it's making me a little anxious, because there's not a whole lot for him to see. Gold, who is something of a guru when it comes to social media (he was CMO at MySpace.com before venturing out on his own, soon-to-be-disclosed, social media enterprise), is the latest of the 174 people who've begun following me on my Twitter account.

Gold is adding to my guilt. Not because I'm half Jewish, but because with each new follower, I feel compelled to tweet something -- but I don't. I don't for a lot of reasons, but mainly because I still don't see a reason for communicating via Twitter. It may be that I have too many other ways of communicating with the people who "follow me." Like, say the MediaPost "Raw Blog" post you are reading now. Or any of the many other MediaPost publications I contribute to. Or my Facebook account. Or LinkedIn. Or maybe just email. Or, perhaps, even just talking to people.

The problem with me and Twitter, is that I have to many other good communications outlets for me to spend much time tweeting -- or, for that matter, looking at what other Twitter users have to say. Sorry Shawn.

But I'm not an Iranian disident in need of an instantaneous, ephemeral, mass communicaton platform. So kudos to Twitter for contributing to a genuine social revolution, not just a social media one.

But it's not for me. The ephemeral nature doesn't work for me. Nor does the 140 character limitation (hence this long blog post). But I can see it's role, even if I think it's also an ephemeral one that will quickly morph into something else -- something we will all be buzzing about a year from now. Maybe I'll find out about that today, at the OMMA Social conference in New York, where I'll be blogging all day with some of my MediaPost colleagues.

Meanwhile, Twitter is the industry's buzz du jour. And Jeff Loechner, the president of MediaPost and our de facto chief technology officer, seems to think Twitter is the real deal, and that some day soon, most of us will be getting most of our information via Twitter, or something very much like it. I hope he's wrong.

Since I joined Twitter earlier this year, I've posted only a handful of tweets, including one about a press release who equated Twitter to "brain damage."

"Basically, Twitter has some good uses, but it's making us all a bit stupider," the expert, david Seaman, concluded, noting that, "We're seeing thirty and forty year olds acting like overly emotional teenagers on Twitter."

My most recent tweet (about a month ago) was, "Overheard in MediaPost's corridors: 'It's like Twitter, but only 10 characters.'"

Like I said, I don't get it. If you follow this progression, we'll all soon be communicating so optimally, that we won't actually be communicating at all.

Don't get me wrong. I do see some value in short, transient text messaging. Texting is the most efficient and effective way for me to communicate with my school teacher wife, and my school student son and daughter during the day, to update them on important developments, or simply to make dinner plans.

But when I recently texted the three of them to update them on an important family matter, I received three replies that were like the "evolution of digital man..."

My wife sent a few words. My daughter sent just two characters: "ok." My son, just one: "k."

So who are these 174 characters, and why are they following me on Twitter? What do they want from me? And what can I possibly tell them that won't make them experience a few characters, all zzzzzzzzzzzzzz!