Tyler v. Tyler on Twitter

I still don't really understand the appeal of Twitter and understand even less the amount of attention it's gotten, but I read these two opposing viewpoints within minutes of each other and I think they sum up the pros and cons handily.

"How has it come to be that adults in mature settings can bring themselves to say things like: “I just made a tweet about my walk to work”?

Excuse me. You did what on your way to work? Did anybody see you doing it? Do you know there are laws against that sort of thing? You’re lucky you didn’t get arrested for whatever it was you were doing in public because it’s offensive and it pollutes the environment. On second thought, perhaps you should have been arrested for invading the privacy of others, for making your “tweets” all over the place and fouling up an already overburdened media and social networking landscape."

and

"Most of all, the search function helps you tap into a real time conversation on just about any topic you want, including the lecture you just gave. Google is wonderful but it's hard to sort through the mess and figure out where the conversation is now. For sampling opinion on either movies or music, Twitter is essential, or even for researching a forthcoming blog post. Think of it as Google focused on one time-slice and giving the weight of crowd opinion no more than linear force."

Tyler Brule: Bliss of a Twitter-Free Moment

Tyler Cowen: In Praise of Twitter