Memo to newspapers

Putting links to your stores on Twitter is fine. But when those links take me to graphics-laden pages that take $90 worth of airtime to download on my BlackBerry, you've kind of missed the point of linking to your stories on Twitter.

Oops!

It turns out my live Twittering of the WWE HOF last night resulted in me basically spamming Facebook with status updates, because I have Twitter update my Facebook status. And that resulted in the news feed of all my friends being filled with nothing but my tweets.

Frankly, I blame Facebook for allowing this to happen.

Today's breathless Twitter hyperbole

globeandmail.com: Why Twitter is a matter of life and death

Twitter, once solely the concern of technophiles and new media pundits, is now a firm part of mainstream culture, both online and off.

The new Facebook is the old Twitter

It wasn't that long ago that Facebook overhauled its look, a move that predictably resulted in a ton of complaints. However, Facebook stuck it out, the complaining soon died, and life continued on in cyberspace.

Fast forward just a few months, and Twitter is all the rage, so Facebook decided to once again overhaul its look to make it more Twitter-like.

And I hate it with a passion. Hate, hate, hate. As in, "Thinking of shutting down my Facebook account" hate.

Yes, I know I've agreed with the sentiment that complaining about Facebook is one of those "first world" complaints that us comfortable North Americans make while real problems affecting real people remain ignored so we can complain about Facebook.

That said, the new Facebook format is terrible. It's Twitter. But we already have Twitter. Sure, Twitter is likely stealing traffic away from Facebook, but Twitter has, to my knowledge, no revenue model, and no revenue to speak of, so I have no idea how long Twitter is going to be around.

Facebook, meanwhile, has a devoted (read: fanatical to the point of being dangerous) legion of fans that feels very attached to the site and does not suffer changes gladly (witness the recent revolt over the Terms of Service). So why would Facebook tempt fate again by overhauling its look and risking alienating its users?

All the fun little intricacies that made Facebook "Facebook" are being removed - the status updates no longer default to that awkward third person, "Mike is ...". Awkward, but uniquely Facebook. The birthday calendar has vanished. I have this weird sidebar full of useless things my friends are doing.

In short, I'm not impressed.

And, no, I'm not really going to shut down my Facebook account. In about a week, I'll probably forget what the "old" Facebook even looked like - about the time that Facebook updates its look again and people start complaining about how much they miss the Twitter-like look.

But if I've learned anything from The Simpson's (and I'd like to think that I haven't, but that's a complete lie) it's that, "Rest assured, I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world."

Changed my Twitter handle

There's a long and complicated reason why I had the old Twitter handle that I did, but I decided to go with my real name to make it easier for people to find me. Hopefully, by the time this is published, I'll have the Twitter sidebar working again on the blog.

I'm all a-Twitter

So, despite my initial reservations about Twitter as a valuable form of social media, I have decided that as a micro-blogging interface, it's pretty good for quick venting or whatnot on matters that don't actually warrant an entire blog post here.

In other words, if actual posts here seem spartan, check my Twitter feed (see sidebar on right), which is updated far more regularly.

I'm a twit ... I mean, I'm on Twitter

As if succumbing to the Empire of Facebook wasn't bad enough, I'm now on Twitter. And I really don't know why. As far as I can tell, Twitter is like the Facebook status update and ... er, it's like the Facebook status update. But apparently Twitter is very important, as it's all the rage in social media circles. So, I'm on Twitter. Prepare to be bored silly by my lack of updates, which are now in the sidebar of my blog.

(What's really scary is that I have FOUR PEOPLE following my tweets, and I've updated three times since signing up a month ago.)