Originally Posted by
Mountain Trader
By "twitter substitute", I was saying that a lot of the posts on FT say nothing, offer little or nothing and are meaningless almost on arrival. There's nothing wrong with Twitter, texting or other forms of communication-I use them too to find out information I need fast. But filling FT with meaningless posts about information useful only to the poster-like how many hard pulls you've had in the last month-has really changed FT and for many ruined it. To prove my point, just look at the number of FT posts by many of the most active participants-low totals, indicating recent arrival. Now high totals don't assure wisdom, but in my mind's eye, things have changed and not for the better.
As a smart person once said, on the Internet there is lots of information but not much knowledge.
FWIW - there's an article in the WSJ today about how old folk like me (I'm 62 - but the person who wrote the article - and was feeling old - is 33!) dislike new technology because it makes us feel old. I don't buy the premise. In terms of what I do to make a living - investments - I am big ^^^ in terms of using a lot of new technology. Like websites that cater to people who buy/sell bonds. I use a GPS in my car - and to play golf. I like XM radio too. We read on a Kindle - and use iTunes for music. All these things may seem pretty primitive - but they give us useful information - entertainment too.
OTOH - Twitter - Facebook? Does anyone really want to know that I'm at Whole Foods - and the chorizo sausage looks great today? I sure don't need that info from anyone I know. As for Facebook - my favorite thing about that is the South Park episode - the one where Kyle (?) goes from 0 to like 400k friends. If you haven't seen it - see it. Note that my 92 year old father is on Facebook - because a lot of people he meets want to have a 92 year old friend on Facebook. Not that any of these "friends" would ever meet him for lunch or dinner
. IOW - be a real friend.
Concerning the cloud - as people who have tons of sensitive and/or hard to get financial records/data on computers - not to mention thousands of pictures and tons of music - well I don't think "the cloud" will take better care of my stuff than I do. I back up every day. Does the cloud? And where does it back up? And what do you do when it gets hacked?
As for the phrase "hard pull" - when I first saw it - it sounded somewhat intriguing and dirty
. But when I found out it had to do with credit card applications <snooze>. Robyn