Rick Ross Tries To Think

For the past 9 months, since April of 2009, we have offered significant Twitter support for every link submitted to DZone. We make it easy for you to tweet any link, easy to sign up to follow DZone (and several thousand have), and easy to spot the biggest and most popular links.

As of this moment we have provided instant tweet support and shortened URLs for 399,864 links. In total, these links have garnered just 273,470 clicks. Now, some of you may say “a quarter-million clicks, that’s not too bad” but the truth is that this represents less than a week’s worth of normal clicks – a pathetic week at that!

In other words, after 9 months of steady support for Twitter, the sum total of the click-through to your blogs and websites really comprises only a few extra days worth of our normal traffic. Twitter adds less than 1 click to the attention the average DZone link receives. We’ve given lots of valuable screen real-estate and valuable time to supporting twitter, but I’m not sure the developer audience really cares.

What do you think? Has it been worthwhile to support twitter at your site? Have you captured any quantitative or qualitative data that supports how you feel? I know Twitter is all the rage, but it is honestly hard to believe that DZone members benefit much from all the space and attention we give to Twitter. In fact, it feels like we’re just helping to fuel the hype wave.

When I was a teen I read Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 short story, “Harrison Bergeron.” If you haven’t read it, then doing so would be time well spent. The story tells of a gruesome future version of democracy which enforces “all men are created equal” as a literal imperative. If you have above-average talent, the government hobbles you. If you’re smart, they make you wear an earpiece which blasts noise at regular intervals to distract you.

And so we come to Twitter… This is about culture, not about individuals.

The steady stream of tweets is at least as effective as the government enforced distractions in Bergeron’s society. Twitter isn’t a way to keep everyone connected, and these 140-character blasts aren’t the virtual synapses of a new neural network that spans all of society. Nothing could be further from reality. It turns out we don’t need Vonnegut’s “Handicapper General” to ensure that we’re adequately distracted. We’re more than happy to do it to ourselves voluntarily – we’re even eager!

It must be true that the internet is democratizing the world, but I’m not altogether sure I’m going to love the world we get as a result. It’s hard enough to focus without Twitter, and I don’t even have an earpiece blasting at me every 15 seconds! If you ask me, Twitter is more than just distracting: it will make/keep us “equal” in a Harrison Bergeron kind of way.