I signed up to Facebook (just to see what the fuss was about some time ago), used it for about a week and then became frustrated with it essentially demanding my attention all the time.

I now login in periodically to check things, maybe once every six to eight weeks.

The people who generate 20 tweets every half hour may be interesting but not more so than the people who generate one or two tweets a day (or less frequently). The infrequent-yet-interesting tweeters’ tweets get lost in the deluge.

I would like a couple of features: (1) a page that aggregates the most recent tweets of all those I follow, like Facebook aggregates status updates of my friends in order of recency, and (2) a way to bookmark interesting tweeters that I don’t want to follow for a while but don’t want to forget about. Yes, I could use a bookmarking app to do that but I want it to be a Twitter-based feature.

On the whole I am loving Twitter. I liken it to permitted eavesdropping although that’s just a start to what’s great about it. I’ve done this with email lists where I lurk but email lists have their deficiencies.

The SMS push you mentioned is, again, voluntary, and opt-in. They’re free to turn it off, just like they’re free to unsubscribe from a blog’s RSS feed.

Interesting thoughts on social networks requiring actions, but as pointed out, you can turn all of that off in the settings.

It’s a nice tactic by Facebook- email you so you never forget it’s there, but make you click to find out what is happening- that way they get the ad revenue.

I tried twitter when it first came out and was absolutely disgusted by how utterly awful it was. Never mind wasting time reading stupid comments, it took 2 minutes to post an update. It’s hopefully come of age (hired some decent staff and bought some hardware) now, so I’m giving it another go… http://twitter.com/alexanderhowell

Groups might be an interested way to mitigate this, but I completely understand why they have to be very careful in rolling out a feature like that.

It’s become like an elite chatroom where you need to be accepted by many individuals before you really can join in on the fun. Most people who use Twitter in The Netherlands are either marketeers or have a strong affiliation with internet or media.

It functions very well. People dicuss topics, put documents up for review, ask for help with their Mac or PC and discuss new websites or webapplications. Even company names have been made-up using Twitter. And whenever there is a big soccer match or Dragon’s Den is on TV people discuss it via Twitter making it a social TV app.

Is this happening just in The Netherlands or do you spot the same behavior in other parts of the world?