The Internet is particularly susceptible to media fad mentality. Back in the early days of the Web's mainstreaming (about 1995), people in the media loved throwing around goofy fad terms like "Cyberspace," "Virtual Realm," and the "Information Superhighway."

Twitter provides you with plenty of Tweets, which are sort of like dumber versions of blog entries.

The latter was always my favorite, because it managed to take a one-syllable concept — the "Web" — and turn it into needless four-syllable jargonese. These names existed only because journalists wanted to sound cooler when they reported them.

Such is the case with the Internet's latest mega-craze, Twitter. I gotta be honest with you. I fail to see the value of Twitter in about 95 percent of its application. Who needs a status update on you eating lunch, or going to a movie, or DRIVING A CAR? (Dude: Drive your car; don't "tweet" your status for those of us "following" you.) There's even a microblogging cat on Twitter. (Read more...)