Zach Flauaus

Twit-Out: The much talked about event

// May 19th, 2008 // Twitter

Twitter has caused quite the big uproar with it’s constant outages at points. Anymore, it’s a matter of “Is Twitter up?” So to help “combat” this, some Twitter users have organized a global “Twit-Out” event on May 21 (two days from this post) where you don’t tweet. Simple as that.

As you may have noticed, I’m a big Twitter user myself. I wouldn’t be doing a lot of the things I’m doing now if it wasn’t for Twitter. I love Twitter. I really do. It’s just so simple to jump on there for a few minutes, see what’s going on, do a few replies, and then BOOM!, you’ve wasted your day on it. Not to say it’s a bad thing. You can get some really great ideas from the Twittersphere, but it can be a huge time waster.

Now, people either support it or hate the idea with a passion and decide to send hate to those that support it. I support it, but mainly because I want to take a day away from Twitter and see how things change in my daily routine. Think of it as a science project. I’ve had people say “I’ll do it, but I’m not sure I’ll like it” to “I’m still undecided” to the plain ol’ “That’s just dumb.” Now then, I’d like to point a couple things out.

1) You don’t have to join us. It’s called freedom of choice and that’s what the internet (should) be about. If you don’t think it’s right, that’s fine. Go ahead and say it. I won’t argue for you to join us. But don’t go around saying “OMGZ!!! THAT’S THE WORST IDEA EVER, YOU’RE STUPID!!!11!” because that won’t score you any points with me. Just say why and I’ll take it.

2) Will this get anything done? Probably not. Does it make a point? Yes. As my friend Andrew Dobrow (@anjrued), Twitter is about community, and if you make that community mad enough, they’ll leave.

Am I placing the blame solely on Twitter? Not exactly. Twitter has been growing at a rapid rate, one which not many people could have predicted, so scalability has brought up a problem. But with the rumored funding that they have received ($15 million+), there’s not a huge reason why they can’t keep up.

So are you Twitting-Out or Twitting-In? Let me know in the comments.