Twitter: Taking Off, Helping to Create Boring People

Kevin Maney peers ahead: So Twitter is taking off like a rocket, winning corporate fans and getting new funding. Now, much has been said, particularly by people over 27, about the inanity of the whole idea of Twitter. Who wants to know that your brother is RIGHT NOW "rediscovering the magic of Journey"? Or that your cubicle-mate is trimming her toenails? But, apparently, millions of people do.

But here's the thing: These days, every hip person has to keep up a MySpace and Facebook page, shoot photos of everything they do and post them on Flickr, shoot video of everything they do and post it on YouTube, and now type up 140-character Twitter tweets about everything they do. How long before there are so many electronic requirements of life, people start Twittering that they're updating their Facebook profiles? Or posting YouTube videos of themselves reading their friends' tweets? People won't have any time to do anything BUT post to the various electronic versions of their lives and look at the same of their friends. Until, eventually, everyone is doing the same thing and pretty much nothing else, thereby boring the entire population to tears.

And then the most popular people will be those who actually rebel and STOP Twittering and YouTubing and Facebooking so they can actually DO something that's worth knowing about. It will be an emperor-has-no-clothes moment, and everyone will throw down their cell phones and laptops and follow that first breakout prophet the way the crowds followed Roger Daltry in Tommy, and go and frolic in the ocean in jeans and no shirt, never to Twitter again.

Well, just a thought.