Comments on: Oh, Please: USA Today’s Ridiculous Twitter Experiment

By: Henal

Henal — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:05:51 +0000

What will be next? Perhaps the next thing will be that USA Today becomes just twitter?? Who knows, with the comments shown here I guess the experiment was not the hit it was hoped it would be!

By: Dan Gillmor

Dan Gillmor — Sat, 30 May 2009 18:57:50 +0000

There are lots of tools that accomplish similar things. What’s happening with Twitter that matters most is the ecosystem developing around it — people adding on functionality and use-cases that have great value. I see it as an early warning system and serendipity generator. Not perfect, by any means, but extremely useful.

By: Geoff Dougherty

Geoff Dougherty — Fri, 29 May 2009 22:15:52 +0000

USA Today pursuing brevity and flashy marketing at the expense of thoughtful, complex discussion? Who knew?

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:52:03 +0000

Good call, Dan.

I’d be interested in hearing more about why you like Twitter to begin with, since it appears at first blush to be merely a broadcast version of gmail status messages, and the problems you cite as per its use with this article would seem to plague it regardless.

By: anon.

anon. — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:11:56 +0000

fair enough. i’m probably tipping my hand too far if i admit that the cartoonish visual identity of the paper repulses me. i rarely get to reading a story because the whole seems to be so much eye-candy, though i do use it to check the weather when i’m staying at a hotel sans computer.

By: Dan Gillmor

Dan Gillmor — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:04:21 +0000

Compared with the hollowed-out shells of most local/regional papers, USA Today is downright robust. Not good as it should be, no doubt, but in today’s market “respectable” is a fair word, IMO.

By: anon.

anon. — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:07:25 +0000

hopefully i can be forgiven for thinking that USAT is not “a respectable” paper.