Wait a stinking moment.  It seems that pregnant women can purchase a belt to wear that will broadcast a tweet every time their baby kicks.

Don’t get me wrong, these tweets are just as informative and useful as those posted by adult users.  If we were  to have a race between Ashton Kutcher and an unborn fetus to see who could post useful content first, I couldn’t tell you who would win.  It would just be too close to call it.

I often tell myself that I’m being too hard on society, to stop being so damned self-righteous and just shut the fuck up already.  Quit picking out the very worst that’s out there and amplifying it into a bigger issue than it really is.  Then I see something like the kickbee and realize that we as a society are doomed.

Instead of ridiculing it, maybe I should instead take some pointers from them and try to market my own version of this.  The way I see it, the flaw in their design is that they’ve cut out half of the world’s population from their marketing.  What Iwould do is create a belt that anyone can wear, regardless of their race, sex or religious beliefs.  The first two I’d work on the development of would be the Shitbee(tm) and the Belchbee(tm):

But people are always finding new and inventive ways to use the powerful social tool that is Twitter.  For instance, if, while you’re supposed to be watching your child and are instead tweeting away while said child drowns, you can update your Twitter feed to tell everyone, post pictures of the now dead child and even argue with any people that might post to your feed to let you know that you’re not a very good parent.

Think that’s outside the boundaries of social networking? Ms. Ross would beg to differ. She was kind enough to update all of the world from the tweets that occurred during the downing, the notice of death and then of course her posts defending her previous tweets.  All of this happened on the same day of the child’s death, when most people would be grieving.

I guess it shouldn’t surprise mein the least that the perfect Twitter user doesn’t need the time to grieve.

This, though…. this I just couldn’t let go by without doing my part. “Twitter is the most used word of 2009″.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  I’ve already done a lot to help this happen. I feel I could do more though.  So, before I go mud my living room, I’m going to do what I can to ensure that no word sneaks up to try to unseat Twitter.

My ex-wife found my family on Facebook, so now I could follow her updates on Twitter if I wanted.  This great new social fad makes this possible.  Imagine my elation.

Although it’s the most popular social network at the moment, the developers of Twitter are too stupid to figure out how to make it profitable.  After years of operating in the red, the geniuses that created such a great technology think they’ve finally figured out how to make it profitable.  They’re going to try advertising.  Just another example of Twitter’s thinking outside the box.

Miley Cyrus, the pole dancing teen hero that likes being a part of nude photo shoots says you shouldn’t use Twitter any more.  In fact, she raps about it. This is unfortunate, since Ms. Cyrus is the perfect Twit.

I bought this shirt to help spread the word about Twitter.

and finally, in case all of the others are too ambiguous:

If you use Twitter, chances are great that you’re a mindless sheep.

Oddly absent in his how-to  is the suggestion that they do something productive. But then again, we are talking about the Twitter crowd.

I can see why Facebook took the lead in social networking, with incredibly hot promotional gimmicks like the “name grab” they had recently that went over like a lead balloon with anchors tied to it.

Well, at least we still have Twitter, although we almost lost it. Hehe, not really. But they did get some free advertising out of it, which is good.

It’s not these networks in particular that I have a problem with. It’s the users. Although I don’t have an account on any of them, you can’t help but to have been led to user pages in the past and it seems of my acquaintances, I’m the only person who doesn’t have accounts on all three of these sites.

In the Facebook article, they quoted a person’s Twitter post that was opining that the Facebook name grab was a failure. He used one social networking failure to make a statement about another social networking failure. These people have so few real goals in their life, they have time to hop from network to network, discussing the previous network.

Therein lies the problem. These networks cater to people who, outside of social networking, don’t seem to have a purpose. They’re the human equivalent of widgets. They’ve got iPhones with Twitter apps, Facebook addons, MySpace active desktop applets and numerous aggregators and notification services all to find out what’s going on in these networks, what people think of what they’ve said in their last post and who’s linking to them. As you wade through the shit, you realize that there are too few gems of wisdom lying around to make navigating the huge piles of refuse more trouble than it’s worth. Real content is so rare that it’s become the exception that proves the rule. If you want to know why we’re in the midst of a recession, just look to the social networks.

Not for information, dumbass. Just look at the users.

• 85% follow friends
• 54% follow celebrities
• 29% follow family members
• 29% follow companies

Keep in mind that that last number is the only thing Twitter really cares about.  They need companies with deep pockets to want to use Twitter, if they’re going to stay in business. If nobody is there to follow a business, the business has no reason to be at Twitter.  Unfortunately for them, 12 year olds aren’t a great demographic to dominate, since allowances can only go so far.

This was my favorite part of the article, however:

“Twitter dominates the news, but clearly we’re only touching the surface of its potential as a marketing vehicle,” Participatory Media Network co-founder and chairman Michael Della Penna said in a release. “This is a classic ‘glass half full’ scenario for Twitter because it’s clear that Gen Y has an appetite for social networking, but still hasn’t fully embraced micro-blogging. There is a tremendous opportunity now for marketers to develop strategies to get this important group active on Twitter too.”

I want to try my hand at this.

Give me a second.

Ok, I’m ready.

“The Edsel dominates the roadways, but clearly we are ready to carry actual passengers that purchased the car,” Schwim Dandy, the head public relations consultant for FoMoCo-Edsel Division stated in a release. “This is a classic ‘can’t lose’ scenario for Edsel because it’s clear that the public like to drive, but still haven’t fully embraced the toilet seat on the front of our car.  There is a tremendous opportunity now for us to develop strategies to get this important group into our cars.”

Well, maybe I need to work on it a bit.

Seriously, the sheep are supposed to emulate the top of the totem pole.  What in the hell are we supposed to do when the top of the totem pole is busy emulating us?

The Whitehouse blog recently posted an article letting you know how “connected” they have become.  In it, they give you the links to their Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, Youtube and iTunes channels. You can now get the most critical information concerning our national welfare and security right alongside these guys.

I am a technological whore.  I’ll try about anything of perceivable value that comes down the pipeline at least once.  What separates me from the majority is the fact that I’m almost always a late adopter, due to the fact that I am almost completely isolated from popular media.  It’s not that I don’t want to try it at the same time as everyone, it’s just that I have no clue it exists when it’s in the spotlight. This actually works to my advantage.  By the time I’m made aware of the new technology,  if it’s been embraced by our nation’s lowest common denominator, I don’t have anything to drop.  I just move on to the next shiny object on the horizon.  It’s a huge time saver. By the time I knew that Myspace and Facebook existed, it had already become the 21st century adaptation of Geocities and Angelfire, rife with people that had no stylistic taste and nothing to say but an incredible desire for everyone to know it.  Imagine how much time I saved deleting all of my content.

Now, consider our leaders.  It’s not that they created all these pages.  That’s just a symptom of something larger.  The people that these positions appeal to are egomaniacs.  People that feel America needs them.  These people aren’t supposed to go out and sign up to every possible web trend they can find to show how “connected” they are.  I’ve long ago quit wondering why the rest of the world laughs at us, but my God, do we have to make ourselves such easy targets?

What’s next? I predict personal text messages from POTUS:

Hav 2 hav lunch with American car makers agan,th wny bitches.I hop Bidn remembers 2 chu with his mouth closed.Its distractng.

And just after the break: Water is wet and fire is hot.

It seems the tech internet news sites are just getting around to discussing the fact that Twitter is useless as a source for receiving legitimate information.  In this instance, they’ve used the swine flu scare(I refuse to use the word outbreak in conjunction with swine flu, since there is no outbreak. Also, please take note that I won’t be attributing Proper Name status to the term swine flu.  You’re a fucking mental hemorrhoid if you don’t see the pathetic attempts of the news agencies for what they are.)

In short, the article is simply stating the same things I have been saying all along. You deserve what you get if you use it to influence any decision you make in your life.   It’s been overrun by megalomaniacs, slaves to to the flavor of the week and people who like the internet equivalent of hearing themselves talk.

Call me a luddite if you will, but it’s clear to everyone (except those busily sharing their shopping list on their Twitter feed) that Twitter, as a source of valuable information is a failure.  Sure, there are companies, people and organizations using it for it’s intended purpose and to it’s potential.  The problem is that the number of them is so small that they’re buried by all the dipshits that created an account with nothing useful to say. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that these same dipshits JUST…. KEEP…. POSTING….

Twitter, as a technology had the same capabilities as any other idea started by a couple guys with no money and dreams of making it big in the dotcom world.  It could have grown into something useful and more, it could have taken the place of an older news format that’s losing relevance.  What happened instead is it got picked up by the crowd that has nothing of value to provide.  You began seeing celebrities using it to gain more fans, which in turn gave us an influx of morning show host-types inviting you to ride the next wave of coolness by subscribing to this new thing called “Twitter”.  Why, you  could subscribe to their “tweets” and you would receive our thoughts as they gave them to you.  All the people sitting at home stuffing their faces with twinkies now have their heros, the celebrities and the people that tell them the truth about the world, the morning show hosts telling them that they needed to to hop on this bandwagon.

And so Twitter exploded as the place to be and thing to do and died as a legitimate form of communication.

You see, Ashton and CNN were in a heated race to be the first to have 1 million subscribers to their Twitter channel. You may think that it was done in good humour, but no, this was serious business.  I’m going to share some quotes from the superstar, Ashton himself.  Wondering if these came from his twits?  Don’t be silly.  You have no room for complete sentences, much less fully formed thoughts that make sense.  No sir, he went on “Larry King Live” to talk about this “battle”.  He wanted to explain why this “duel” had to happen.

“At the end of the day, we all have ego, we all have some level of ego, but if we can use our ego to actually create good charitable things in the world in some way, and use our ego — originally, I defined Twitter as an ego stream when I first saw it. But then what I realized is if we can transform that into something that’s positive that can actually effectively change the world, that can be a really valuable tool.”

That’s one hell of a sentence, there Ashton.

There are also some quotable quotes from Oprah Winfrey and Sean P-Diddy “Puff Daddy” Combs.  It’s hard for me to allow the type of content to make it to my clipboard, but I will say that Puff said “bling bling” and Oprah thanked her loyal followers for supporting her during this brave new world of twits.  Of note is the fact that Oprah had over 73,000 followers on Twitter before actually twitting anything.  You guys get that?  almost 75 thousand people joined her channel before she did.  This proves Ashton’s point that although he’s a celebrity, we’re all the same really.  For instance, were I to create a Twitter account, there is a good chance that 75,000 people would sign up to hear about my latest bowel movement before I got a chance to actually write anything.

Oh, and Puff daddy wants you to know that he has substance.  If a 140 character restriction suited anyone, it would be him.

UPDATE:

CNN congratulates Ashton and includes the following in their kudos:

Now more than ever, the consumer is in the driver’s seat and we couldn’t be more gratified than to be part of this historic social media milestone.

If that truly is the case, the consumer is more of a fucktard than I originally assumed.

That’s saying a lot.