@Ashton Kutcher... kill me now

If you haven't already figured it out, I'm not a fan of Twitter. I just don't get it. Yes, it is funny to follow Shaq's rambling, nonsense Twitter, and Lance Armstrong posts cool pictures of cycling on his Twitter, but for the most part, I'm not quite obsessed with Twitter.

But do you know who is? Ashton Kutcher!

That idiot kid from That 70s Show who hasn't been in a decent movie in recent memory, much less any movie. What does this kid do for a living anyway? He must just mooch off Demi Moore.

Ashton has been spending his time trying to become the first Twitter user to amass 1,000,000 followers. No, not @CNN or @NYTimes or @Something worthwhile to society, but Ashton Kutcher. I was starting to warm up to Twitter, but not anymore. No more love for Twitter, now that it's obvious its users are more interested in what Ashton Kutcher had for dinner than the European Summit in Prague.

I was warming up to Twitter because Asher Epstein, the managing director for the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, provided insight to some useful Twitter functions. For example, people in a movie theatre could tweet their location, and say if there are seats left. People in traffic could tweet accident reports (obviously not while driving, since that would just add to the accident toll). Though not being used for this purpose at the moment, Twitter had potential according to Asher Epstein. And I believed Asher Epstein.

This belief is now shattered, since Ashton Kutcher is now the most influential person on Twitter. Excuse me while I lament to future of society.

Susan Boyle... no relation

I'll admit, I saw the Susan Boyle video pretty early on. With Facebook, Twitter and away messages, it's easier for those of us of a younger age group to share things and encourage others to take a look.

I knew the Susan Boyle video had gone crazy when my dad sent the family an email with a link to the YouTube video. It didn't take long for the video to get over 7 million hits, which I'm sure will keep growing. Susan Boyle has appeared on Larry King Live, various innocuous morning news programs, and even on E!.

Not only was Susan Boyle famous for her voice, but she gained notoriety for her somewhat frumpy appearance and quirky personality. As Carlos Mencia cynically but somewhat correctly remarked, if Susan Boyle were beautiful, she would have been discovered years ago.

Maybe the rest of the world was a little late in catching on to Susan Boyle, but we did. The ability to share these uplifting moments almost exactly as they happen has made her a superstar. For most of us, YouTube is just a place to watch funny videos to waste time browsing. But for someone like Susan Boyle, YouTube changed her life. This definitely wouldn't have happened 10 or even 5 years ago.

The eventual death of social media

So I went to an interesting lecture on campus the other day with speaker Hooman Radfar, a leader of widget development. His whole poin

Image via CrunchBase

t was that Facebook has passed its peak, and in the next decade will become obsolete.

What?! I don't understand?! No more Facebook?!?! This guy must be crazy?!?!!?!?

Crazy, I think not. Thinking outside the box, most definitely.

His main point was that Facebook does 100 different things - photos, status updates, birthday reminders, messages and so on and so forth. Facebook only has 24 hours in a day to devote to everything is does. A sight that focuses solely on photos, for example, should in theory create a more user-friendly interface that more people would use and enjoy. Flickr could fill this need, if Flickr weren't awful. As more people become Internet savvy, they will move away from the convience of Facebook for better applications.

Radfar said the cracks in Facebook were starting to show, especially when it comes to status updates. Facebook clearly tried to imitate the Twitter phenomenon but having regular updates, as opposed to an away message-type status. Twitter is gaining members faster than the site can handle, literally, and more people are using Twitter, instead of Facebook, to let their peeps know what is up.

Radfar last main point about the eventual death of Facebook is that somewhere down the line, people a

Image via CrunchBase

re going to realize how creepy it is Facebook has all this information on us, and we're going to want out. This sort of happened a few weeks ago when Facebook said it got to keep everything we put on the site, and people formed these protest groups and circulated Internet petitions. Whether we accept it or not now, Facebook has immense power with such a large user base. One day, we're going to freak out and not want this anymore, and we'll leave Facebook faster than the state tries to stop all funding to our University.

Hey Look, New Facebook

So new Facebook launched today. Every time Mark Zuckerberg comes out with a new iteration, I care a little less about Facebook. I miss the good ole days, where you had to be in college. I think I have a John Kellogg opinion when it comes to Facebook: it's a necessary evil.

I'm about to graduate, and hopefully enter the workforce, so I think my use of Facebook will definitely be curttailed, but I'll still have to use it. So many of my friends, relatives and other contacts are on Facebook, it's one of the only options when it comes to staying in touch with a lot of these people. Like I said, necessary evil.

Image via Wikipedia

Hey, at least it's better than Twitter!

I don't understand Twitter

Apparently, as of February 2009, Twitter is the 3rd largest social networking site (after Facebook and MySpace) with around 6 million users. That's great and all, but to be honest, I don't understand Twitter!

A friend of mine recently created a Twitter and sent me a link, and this was my first exposure. I had heard people talking about Twitters, but I never cared enough to go investigate before now. It looks like all you do is write quick posts under 140 characters in length, either from your computer or from your mobile device. I don't understand how this is different from a blog. It just seems like a blog with shorter posts.

Twitters have been used for ongoing commentary-type situations, like during the President's recent State of the Nation. People were writing instant feedback to literally every sentence the President said on their Twitters. I guess that's cool.... I guess.

My friend, however, just uses his Twitter for "witty" observations about every day life, such as "Liberal arts means you have to dissect a grasshopper to be a journalist," or "Whoever decided that Al Gore should get a Nobel Prize before the guy that came up with pizza delivery obviously did not go to college."

It's mind blowing, earth shattering information, is it not. I think he should just get an imaginary friend to tell all these witticisms to, so the rest of the world doesn't have to suffer through them.