I’ve decided to join the slowing growing ranks of people who are extricating themselves from the ranks of the Twitterati. I’ve come to feel that while Twitter is a lot of fun at times, it’s also not adding any real value to my life.

Participation in Twitter has revealed a couple of telling things to me. The information people are sharing there is not particularly deep or important. You pick up these little tidbits of info from people but none of it is especially critical to my life. The updates range from mildly amusing to ridiculously narcissistic. I’ve also found that using twitter contributes to the dilution of a person’s content and brand. If I want to publish and share things I can do that via my blog. If I want to chat with people I can do that by using Meebo, Google Talk or any number of instant messaging applications. I don’t need those chats to be saved and distributed via RSS as Twitter does. That stuff adds to the noise and it’s not very important.

If something is important to me in the future I will post it to my blog or share via a social bookmarking service. These methods worked fine prior to the existence of Twitter and I now have new appreciation for them. If someone wants to follow me then they always have the option of subscribing to the RSS feed on this blog or my lifestream. If I want to follow someone I’ll look for the RSS feed from their main publishing source.

I’m also evaluating the use of other services that I am currently involved with, especially FriendFeed. FriendFeed is a bit more useful than Twitter. But then again most of the posts I’m seeing from my contacts on FriendFeed are just being passed along from Twitter. I’ve got some other reservations about FriendFeed but I will save them for a later post.

Unlike some others who have left the fold I’m going to continue to leave my Twitter account in place for a while. Eventually I will delete it altogether. Somehow I think it will all be just fine.