Let’s face it: for the most part, you don’t even really care “What’s happening?” on Twitter in the lives of your closest friends. 140 characters doesn’t really give a lot of room for strong opining, philosophical reverie or deep musing. It is, mostly, a perfect length to allow people to express their love for their cats, their annoyance with “haters,” their expression of annoyance at a stray sock, and other bovine and contentless utterances.
But you know who Twitter would be perfect for? A demographic that does nothing but make bovine and contentless utterances! So it’s worth noting, at least to laugh, that a team in Belgium has developed a new way for gummy, drooling neonates to use Twitter.
The interface the babies are using to Tweet is called the Twoddler. Groan. It basically combines a baby’s activity board with the social networking service. The team added photos of the babies’ patents to sections on the board, and then used what part of the board the children were playing with to issue a Tweet, based on what the toddler is doing or thinking. Example: if the baby pushes the squeaking button next to his father’s picture, it would tweet: “I miss my daddy.”
Oh, sure, that’s plenty dumb. But really, if a toddler could tweet, would it be any less facile than 95% of the Tweets out there. Consider this tweet that popped up just today in my friends’ list: “I love to poop!” You’re telling me a toddler didn’t write that?
