Liz Lawley on why Twitter matters:

[Twitter is] about letting the people in your distributed network of family and friends have some sense of where you are and what you're doing. And we crave this, I think. When I travel, the first thing I ask the kids on the phone when I call home is "what are you doing?" Not because I really care that much about the show on TV, or the homework they're working on, but because I care about the rhythms and activities of their days.

While I am interested in how the people I care about are spending their time, I don't need a constant stream of updates telling me *exactly* what they are doing at any given moment. I prefer *not* knowing, and then, when we next write, or sit talk on the phone, or over coffee, have them tell me the stories that are interesting and important to them.

Most bloggers I know have experienced that awkward situation where you are talking to a friend about what's being going on in your life, and they cut you off over and over saying, "Oh yeah, I read about that on your blog..." And you're left with nothing to say, to stories to tell, nothing to share.

Twitter takes that to the extreme: your friends who are part of your Twitter network will know *everything* that you've been up to, not only the stories you took the time to share on your blog.

On the surface the idea that Twitter is important in connecting you with the people you care about is an attractive one. And there probably exist situations and contexts where it is an appropriate form of communication. But when I think about using it, I can't help feel that it will be a constant distraction that will not just disrupt my thinking, but one that will steal my attention and mental energies into building, maintaining, and participating in some shared sense of awareness that is detached from my primary reality: my work, my home life, etc.

Twitter is a form of continuous partial escapism, an ever-present release valve for when your anxiety rises over your ever-dropping threshold. It's a stock ticker streaming across your screen, except you can never afford to buy any shares. It's like staring at the SETI screensaver as it crunches through your bit of data while a comet races overhead through the night sky.