what I am not so sure about Twitter

- things that I don't like so much

*no editing function

One thing about Twitter bothers me, that it's not possible to edit tweets after posting. So typos, or inappropriate word choice, or wrong links will always be there; no chance to correct it. (well, replacing the old one with a new, revised one is certainly possible, but troublesome.) But given the fact that the concept of Twitter is strongly related with text messages, I can understand why they don't provide such function. No one would complain about not being able to edit the text message after sending it.

*authenticity

The authenticity of information being circulated on Twitter is something worth noticing. Like all the other information or resources we find on the Internet, or even in real life, it is rather important to tell their truthfulness. Being quick, or close to real time is the biggest feature of Twitter. Yet its quick pace also, inevitably, increases the odds that the messages being sent might be wrong or flawed. People post the tweets as if doing live news reporting; they throw something out first--whatever they got, and then they correct the errors or give more details as the thing--a public demonstration, an earthquake, a plane crash--progresses or develops.

what I like about Twitter

*easy to use, and to keep use it
Because of the limit of 140 characters, people don't have to--and can't--write as much as those paragraph-after-paragraph blog entries. For me, or maybe just me, when I glance through someone's blog I usually expect certain length of each article. And I would want to be able to do so if I were to keep a blog going. Therefore, the load of using Twitter is not as heavy as that of having blogs. I feel more freely and easily to record some pieces of my life on Twitter.

*multiple roles
People can use Twitter to chat with their real-life friends, or to make friends with tweeters seem to be interesting and worth-knowing. Of course, Twitter can be used as a personal blog. Some tweeters post articles or stories in small pieces, like a daily or weekly column. If they want to share more than words, or more than 140 characters, they can easily insert a link to a full version of their article, a web album, to a YouTube clip, or to online newspaper in the tweet.

Twitter can be a very useful "information feeder" as well. It's like sitting in a super huge but super crowded coffee shop filled with people chitchatting, thinking aloud, communicating, discussing..--well, on the condition that one follows enough people. No need to listen to or absorb or react to all the information sent out. With proper Twitter-related applications it can be very easy to sort out things that are intriguing, things that are topical issues, that everybody is talking about, things that one wouldn't notice otherwise, or things that could be useful for research, investment, education,......

Twitter can, without doubts, be used to increase profits too. More and more business sectors use Twitter as a platform for communication, advertising, notices posting, feedback gathering, so as to shorten the gap between provider/store owner/seller and customer/consumer/buyer. Twitter can be many many other things, depending on how people use it.

*easy to link to more people, and further to expand connections/networks
The following system of Twitter makes it rather easy and not so frightening to build up connections between people. Users can follow whoever they find worth-following; no need for consent or confirmation from the target person. Being someone's follower guarantees the access to the person's tweets (well, except for people who use private account). As a result, the awkwardness of making new acquaintances/friends is, in a way, reduced, and consequently people are encouraged to expand their networks--OK, at least for me.

Also, if it turns out that somebody's Twitter updates are completely boring, or shitty (if they don't talk much--good, but if they update their tweets very frequently--that can be awfully annoying), people can always choose to "un-follow" without worrying the cancellation would be known--unless they are obsessively checking their follower list every five minutes!