Twitter: for people without kids?

Since i'm doing a keynote presentation for a group of secretaries of works councils (what's the right English word for dutch words ondernemingsraad / medezeggenschap? where people get to talk with the managers about decisions?) on trends on the internet on April 18th, i thought i would give Twitter a try. I didn't want to spent money on it so gave Twhirl, a Twitter PC client, a try. And got connected with some Twitting people :-).

Now, shouting a short message in space with no idea who is going to notice or what they would do with it, seems odd to me. If i have something i want friends to know, i sent them an email, call them ... contact them directly.

Another thing that bugged me: sure, i LOVE to communicate, know what friends are up to, get to know new people, let them know what i'm doing etc. But: my life is filled with all kinds of other stuff already! With 2 kids, a wife, a full-time job, 42 RSS-feeds, friends with problems needing help etc (and preparing for this keynote ;-)): no time left! 40+ people twittering 10 messages a day would mean 400 messages. Without counting time for replies: this eats up some time, time i already invest in all those other things. I'm not even doing sports! And lots of other things, like playing board games with my kids. (April 17th: just found this post of another person drowning in Twits and this take on social networking & twitter from Wired Lore Sjoberg says pretty good how i feel about it as well)

So when someone Twittered what was the purpose of social networking sites like LinkedIn and (Dutch) Hyves, i Twitter-replied the same could be asked about the thing he was using to ask the question: "what's the purpose of Twitter?". Jojanneke, a friend i worked with and very active with new media, replied with 2 links, one to her own blog (go and have a look ;-)), and one to this presentation of Erwin Blom (a guy i also heard Remco Pijpers about). I think the slides show nicely what Twitter is about. But also that it depends on your phase of life whether you can fit this in! Just yesterday a (non IT) friend of mine asked me "what are all those people doing on social networking sites. Don't they have a life? Do they even still call people? Don't they have kids to take care of, husbands/wives and normal live things?"

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