RSS feeds provide aggregation. Twitter provides self-aggrandizement.

In all seriousness, Twitter is absolute garbage.

• First and foremost, the much-discussed 140 character limit.
  • It does not lead to pithiness, it leads to an unreadable mess of SMS-speak so people can cram their thoughts into such a small space.
  • It also leads to a proliferation of URL shorteners, which are an absolute diaster in terms of the longterm continuity of the web.
• The Twitter database is a big, flat just-barely-searchable mess.
  • Hashtags are such a ridiculous hack that it's hard for me to believe they haven't come up with something less brain-dead.
  • No threading to speak of. Really? It's 2010 and we can't get threaded conversations right for the most hyped social networking site on the planet?
• The site goes down more than a junkie hooker. Protip: if people the world over recognize your system outage page ("Hey, look, it's the Fail Whale again!"), it's time to get your head out of your ass and use web infrastructure that doesn't suck.

Ultimately, Twitter's "design" "philosophy" caters to the least common denominator and leaves out features that any such system should have. The only reason we know about it is because it had first-mover advantage for the one thing it does well (SMS to web.) But the idea that a platform as rich as the web (including all of our web-enabled cell phones) needs to be tied to the restrictions and conventions of SMS is absurd.

Now give me my butterscotch, turn up Matlock, and get off my fucking lawn.