Dick Costolo Thinks It’s O.K. to Never Tweet

Wouldn't buy the stock and won't use it.

That's right. I don't tweet 'cuz I don't have anything interesting to say.

When a coworker responsible for "social media" at my workplace announced that she was "about to tweet," I promptly went out and bought us all some air freshener.

“This moment contains all moments.” - C.S. Lewis

Correct, nobody NEEDS Twitter. Or Facebook for that matter.
Heck we don't NEED the Internet. We all survived without it.

In case you ever took the time to actually use Twitter, you will see that it can be a great source of information you might not have run across elsewhere. It is a way to 'talk' with others of both similar and dissimilar views.

At this moment, William Shatner is live tweeting memories of Leonard Nimoy with a large group of tweeters.

Please don't knock what you don't understand

Twitter and all these other nonsensical apps or whatever they are, are the things that will be the ruination of mankind. Seriously, do we really need to be in touch 24/7 with the world? What's wrong with a little solitude and inward lookingness. I don't tweet, never read a tweet, never will.

I set up an account years ago but never really found the tweets truly informative. I don't really see much more growth upside to this company. A lot of the people I know are in the same boat. They set up accounts years ago but have all checked out of it altogether.

What a puff piece. Who cares about this guy's fitness routine, and who needs his permission not to waste time tweeting, a 99% useless activity?

Twitter is self-imposed attention deficit disorder.

Why millions of people would want constant interruptions every time a Kardashian or Clooney tweets is an indication of how lost America is. And why anyone with any gravitas would ever tweet, say, President Obama, is an indication of pure pandering.

The sooner this "social" app joins MySpace the better.

Social media is a distraction and mostly feeds the ego with useless behaviors. Marketing firms like it, but there is little societal or personal benefit to Tweeting.

Personally broadcast communications (e.g. - cell or LG based phones) are convenient but if a user is glued face down staring at their (smart?) phone for long periods of time, they fail to notice the world and life that is happening around them. Tweeting or Facebook commenting on the minutia of your day "feeds the ego" but accomplishes little of substance.

Just like the "Kill Your TV" Day… America needs a "Digital Detox" Day

On that day, we all agree to turn off our electronic devices for 24 hours. Then we'll see that life goes on unchanged by Twitter or other social media usage.

Sorry, Dick. No one is confusing abuse with discourse. Try a more plausible excuse.

I don't tweet either. Pointless activity. And i detest hearing/seeing "hashtag" with everything we read lately.

And one more thing: wby do the newsreaders on NBC insist on saying, when referencing a tweet, "... Soandso tweeted out this .."

Tweeted OUT? Is there a tweeted IN? *TWEETED* is enough to convey the message.

Meanwhile, everybody in the fly-over states, and not part of the Media-Industrial Complex, also known as the Chattering Class, are asking themselves "Who is Dick Costolo, and why do I give a rat's rear what he thinks about whether I Twitter, or not?" And still others are asking "What IS Twitter?"

On a slightly more serious note, it is unfortunate that so many important voices in the news today now broadcast their views to a narrow segment of other important people in the news instead of to a broad segment of the American public, as was done formerly when much of television and newspaper coverage was truly national in scope.

For example, NY Times reporter, James Risen, decided to use Twitter to make it known that the rest of his life's work was going to be about exposing what he sees as the Obama administration's suppression of free speech. By choosing an elitist, media 'silo' as his venue, he insured that very few Americans even knew he had said anything at all. Talk about self-suppression of free speech.

We now have 500 variations of the telegraph, the telephone and television to use to tell other people what we think. Many of these variations are privately owned by companies in Silicon Valley. As a societal development, this is not a good thing for anyone except the owners of these companies and their shareholders. Communications channels splintered to smithereens become private conversations among elitists. Twitter that.

When the response to "we suck at abuse" is "yeah, yeah, yeah", shareholders should demand someone else in charge of that very serious issue.

I've wondered since Twitter's inception why anyone would choose that name for a platform when it's users could so easily -- and appropriately -- be called Twits. Having read this interview, I now suspect the choice may have resulted from limited vocabulary.

I never sent a single tweet, and don't have a twitter account, but give this guy, and twitter users, a break. He developed a revolutionary technology that impacted the world. It's probably the quickest way that news spreads.

Don't use twitter if you don't want to, but why criticize others because they do?

I enjoy Twitter, but there's a lot of room for improvement. For instance, a spell checker is needed. I find myself having to delete tweets to re-write them with corrections.

Twitter wastes no time letting users know about new followers. However, Twitter refuses to let users know about unfollowers. Users have to rely on apps that will let them know who and how many users have unfollowed them.

Unless Twitter decides to make some changes and improvements, I won't be surprised if Twitter loses users and not that many will open accounts.

I used Twitter for many years before actually joining. Most people don't realize that anyone can view the tweets in a public account (and the vast majority of Twitter users keep their accounts public.) I just bookmarked the URL's of the Twitter accounts I wanted to follow and checked them whenever I liked. Of course, if you want to post anything or reply, you need to sign up.

My guess is that most negative comments are coming from people who have never used Twitter. I follow news services, like NPR, the NY Times and groups in my professional field, not celebrities. So my Twitter feed functions as a news stream tailored to my tastes, and it's a real time saver—it keeps me well-informed in a very efficient manner. And breaking news regularly appears on Twitter first.

What is it? I don't think I need it.

Totally agree. I have never really used Twitter or Facebook! An I am not that old either !!!

What is twitter?

Dear Sir,

I don't need your permission not to Tweet. I don't need your permission to not follow anyone. Do you really think your "platform" is that important?

Mr. Costolo is correct, I have been on twitter for 5 years and not only have I never tweeted, I only signed in once 5 years ago while making my profile.

The initial selling point seemed marvelous but it turns out twitter is just Facebook in a scroll form. And I agree with George Clooneys observation on Facebook when he stated, I would rather have a public colonoscopy than a Facebook page.

No thanks. Letting everyone in my random daily thoughts is a big enough chore for my ego as it is, I don't need the added pressure of the www tracking my life too.

Birds tweet.

I don't tweet, twitter, or follow.

I have a better suggestion. Stop wasting your life on social media. 99.9999999% of everything that happens on social media is mindless drivel and a complete waste of everyone's time. Social media is narcissism on steroids. Better things to do with your time:

1. Read a good book.
2. Go out to dinner with friends and have real face to face conversations about things that matter.
3. Get a hobby that expands your knowledge, skills, or intellectual horizons.
4. Exercise - I mean real physical exercise, not just poking a touch screen with your finger.
5. Read the news - Real news like Al Jazeera, NY Times, BBC, not garbage like Faux News.
6. Join an organization that focuses on making your community or the world a better place.
7. Grow flowers (or vegetables) if you can.
8 Go out and say hi to your neighbors.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Make something of your life rather than wasting it on silly tweets.

Hey Dick, What about he emails you receive that complain about rape threats and sexually exploiting children? Why do block those people from being abllowed to email you and them suspend them Twitter, leaving the harassers free to terrorize Twitter? Why do did you this just two days ago regarding a man posting a womans address and threatening to come to her home and rape her? Why is that woman gone and that man still on Twitter?

I get it. It is OK not to tweet. But I would go further its OK not to waste mind space or focus on Twitter in any manner. Mr. Costolo is the CEO of Twitter making him the salesman in chief. His statement, "Everyone wants to know and stay up-to-date on what’s happening in their world and be connected and know what’s going on. That’s what Twitter provides. So I think that irrespective of whether you want to tweet, everyone can get value out of Twitter right away." is definitely his opinion but not fact. Twitter is just a product. This product is not essential or the best way to stay up-to-date and connected. The implied arrogance that his product is essentially beneficial to all is both predictable and sad. There are many other fine conduits of information that create far less noise.

Now, if only Twitter would stop abusing independent Twitter app developers, who made them what they are, that would be nice too. They have sucked at that for a very long time. Greed has no bounds, though, so I doubt it will ever happen.

A free and open internet is also consistent with blocking content from trolls, provocateurs, and people who are rude, bores or otherwise annoying.

If it's OK to follow people and never tweet, is it also OK to tweet and never follow people?

In my experience, those who are most likely to block you on Twitter for openly disagreeing with them are those who elsewhere espouse for a free-and-open internet.

Yes, 'To tweet or not to tweet' is still a personal choice. Now if only somebody could explain that to schools and employers who expect people to be doing it all the time, like it or not, the better to help weed out anyone who doesn't 'fit in' with the institution's particular culture, whatever THAT may be. The less THOSE get involved with our private lives, the better.

To say that abuse (or abusive people) on Twitter is "a complex issue" is a cop-out. Political discourse may be heated, but it is rarely so personalized; if it is, that is an easy way to spot abuse. The real concern is that Twitter's inaction on this issue has led people to quit or contemplating quitting what for them is an excellent mechanism for getting out their message. We're not saying these people should be immune from criticism--far from it and some of them and their ideas deserve particularly close scrutiny--but they should have a right to avoid the large-scale, coordinated online assaults that frequently use very personal, odious messages in an effort to shut people up. Twitter is really different, this kind of abuse is new; it has a responsibility to its users not to merely shrug its shoulders and temporize over whether something is "really" harassment or abuse. This is particularly (but certainly not exclusively) true for feminists on Twitter, who confront forms of misogyny and other hatred that once emboldened mobs of an earlier era to do its nasty deeds on a daily if not hourly basis. The possibility of receiving criticism for your ideas is part of the deal of making them public, but online threats that in thankfully comparatively rare cases can escalate to something much worse definitely should not be. It's not especially fair to dump all of that terrible behavior at Twitter's door, but it's the company's medium and so it is its responsibility.