Facebook, Twitter, Flutter and Er.

So I finally decided to try the hype that is Twitter. And it's Stupid. Maybe they should rename it to Waste-of-timer, or This-is-a-popularity-test-all-over-again-and-yes-you-are-back-in-high-school-er. Or maybe just this-is-stupid-er. Anyway, it could be useful, if you want to spend your entire day receiving pointless updates from friends, families, celebrities and strangers. They can be sent straight to your cell phone as a text even. I thought this might be kind of fun for 2 reasons - No. 1: I am cool - Ashton Kutcher sends his personal updates to my phone! Not really, I ask for it, so Twitter texts it to me. I don't know Ashton, he doesn't know me, and he never will. He doesn't receive my updates, yet technically I could claim to know him, right? No. And that was all just to get a point across. If you check me out on Twitter (ebtweet) you will see that I am only following four people - and I'm about to delete Jimmy Fallon. I mean, I might go through withdrawal from his messages at 7am every morning (the funniest joke on late night was:, or leaving this city, thanks for the party; or endorsements for himself - Watch my show!) I thought it might be funny to follow him - maybe he would crack me up all day long with his wit and humor. Guess he isn't that funny - he has writers who have the wit and humor - he just has to deliver it, which is a talent indeed, but not if you are trying to text a joke. It just doesn't translate well. Sorry, Jimmy.

I do, however, follow Chris Diggins (please note the other two people I follow are Alida and Aurelia, they just never update anymore.) (And I will get to number 2 in a minute.) He does not overload my page with a new update every five minutes, nor does he do it @ 7 in the morning. And he has a good sense of humor. On the other hand, all three of these people are also my "friends" on Facebook, so I get their updates there as well. I thought the cool thing about Twitter was that the updates of the people I follow could be sent to my cell phone as a text (that's number 2, btw) - but guess what? You can do the same thing with Facebook - but Facebook will also notify you if they comment on your wall, posts or updates, add photos, video or whatever else you can do on Facebook. So why would I need twitter? Plus, Facebook allows 160 characters, while Twitter only allows 140. Where did they come up with these numbers anyway? But to one-up both Facebook and Twitter, some more college drop-outs started yet another waste of time: Flutter. Their theory is that people don't have enough time to type 140 characters, nor do they have time to read hundreds of updates at 140 characters apiece (they don't have time because they already wasted it writing notes and taking quizzes on....you guessed it: Facebook!) so they only allow 26 characters. How did they come up with that number? I don't have anything to say worth saying (usually, or nothing that is worth wasting my time on, I mean, why would I click the internet icon, wait for it to load the page, login to my account, wait for it to load, just so I could say something phenomenal like "I cant believe its raining" and yes I had to leave out all punctuation marks on that one) in 26 characters to justify the time I just wasted entering that I can't believe its raining (especially if I was living in Seattle ;).

So even though Aurelia and I are not technically college drop-outs (that seems to be the sole requirement for this job) we have decided that since we don't have the time for Facebook (160), Twitter (140) or Flutter (26), we are going to start our own social networking log and call it Er (2). Yes, that is right. We named it Er for the two characters you are allowed, or the fact that you might have to be taken to the Emergency Room for trying to manage four different networking sites and/or because you have hurt yourself out of frustration due to the fact that you can say soooo much in just 2 characters (or from racking your brain trying to beat out the popular guy with the most followers by saying something more profound than his last update.) And yes, we expect you to take 15 seconds out of every hour to login into your account at Er so that you can update a status at 2 characters long. Everyone has a second or two to spare, right? My personal first update is going to be yo (that's my favorite and can mean all sorts of different things - like "yo, get out of my face," or "yo, what up?" or "yo, homey don't play that." Think of the endless possibilities!

That is my analysis of Twitter. Thank you and please take the survey to let us know if you thought this article was helpful.