Subject: EE Times survey finds that 85% of engineers don't like Twitter

Two weeks ago, while most of us were in post-DAC recovery mode, EEtimes.com
reported:

  In a recent EE Times survey of 285 engineers, 85% reported that they
  don't use Twitter.  More than half indicated that the statement "I don't
  really care what you had for breakfast," best sums up their feelings
  about it; others characterized Twitter as "a ridiculous waste of time
  and electrons" or expressed a strong desire for it to simply "go away"...
  The frequency distribution of responses was heavily skewed toward
  "not-at-all-loving-it" with 20% firmly in the "hate it" camp.

I thought this article was interesting because it also pointed to the key
reason WHY I don't like Twitter -- my work requires long periods of
uninterrupted concentration or I'll mess up what I'm doing.

With Twitter you get endlessly pelted every few minutes with random, mostly
useless tweets and retweets.  "Running IE8 on my netbook is way too sloooow.
Chrome is much fasssssster."  "Go Red Sox!"  "Getting on the plane SNA to
DEN. Anxious to see my family."  "Cool. IBM does 'innovation jams' to help
generate ideas."  "Watching a presentation on VHDL-2008. I want to program
in nothing else from now on!"  "NPR's Carl Kasell has been nominated to the
Radio Hall Of Fame! Details on how to vote: xxxxxxxx"  "A cartoon for all
you Mamas."  "Apple controls 20% of NAND Flash market says DRAMeXchange
with iPhone and iPad."  "Why Harry Potter is better than Twilight xxxxxxx"

I simply can't get any real work done with that open fire hydrant of noise
continually blasting at me.  

And I'm sure that I'm not the only engineer who operates this way.

    - John Cooley
      DeepChip.com                               Holliston, MA