Trent Reznor is a Twitter quitter

When a pioneer of social networking turns his back on a social network, is this the beginning of a creeping social apocalypse?

Trent Reznor, frontman of Nine Inch Nails, Webby award winner, and generally interesting chap, has closed his Twitter account.

In June, Reznor declared that as far as social networking is concerned: "I'm out."

And though he briefly returned to microblog about the final, ultimate, totally farewell Nine Inch Nails tour, he has now shut the doors to Twitterdom.

Goodbye to Twitterworld.

(Credit: CC Dameech/Flickr)

Certain fans, he declared on the NIN blog in June, were driving him out: "Looks like the Metal Sludge contingency has discover Twitter! Finally! For those of you that don't know what this is, please let me explain. Metal Sludge is the home of the absolutely worst people I've ever come across. It's populated mainly by unattractive plump females who publicly fantasize about having sex with guys in bands."

So now Reznor's tweets are complete. He decided not to offer a good-bye, nor even some hope for social networking's future.

The haters, jealous of his happy relationship with Mariqueen Maandig, frontispiece of the rock band West Indian Girl, have driven him away.

Oprah didn't tweet at all between June 6 and July 15. But don't worry, people. She's still cool with Twitter.

So who might be next to follow Reznor to the exit?

[cwclifford]

Everyone should follow his lead and stop following the tweeters off the precipice...

[Random_Walk]

Heh - agreed, wholeheartedly :)

[ca5ter]

Twitter, Twitter, Twitter.... stop... please stop!

[baconstang]

I'll tweet my take on this.... Oh, wait. Nevermind.

[C0mmanderB0nd]

How can you kill that which has no life......

[junyr]

win

[El_Segfaulto]

With a gun?

[eltoro2827]

Hopefully twitter will go away as well.

[kewell82]

I don't get what is so appealing about twitter. I just don't get it.

[cvaldes1831]

Twitter kicks ass for learning what pornstars had for breakfast. Of course, this gets sorta old after a couple of days, but oh well...

OMG! no one likes that NIN anyways LOL! I love Twitter and tweeting about my POny. My friend tweeted that NIN likes to kill POnies on stage OMG! GROSS!

[bobfell]

Really, what a great loss... he is just a self-absorbed ******* that hasn't done anything relevant in over a decade and even when he was good he was just even more full of ****. Yeah, that metal sludge contingency is who buys your albums and pays your bills trent... not all girls can be anorexic enough to appear in Playboy.

[bag_of_hammers]

you sound fat

[bobfell]

Actually, no... nor am I a female who would be jealous of his skeezer GF. Im just a late thirties triathlete who had his fun watching trent almost 20 years ago and saw him first-hand... yes went backstage etc. and saw the self loathing and hate that fueled his music up close and personal. After all that time he is either faking that stuff for money or, well... either way he deserves his fans vitriol because it is what he used to beg for... and dish out.

[esteven4]

The thing about Twitter that bothers me is that bloggers, with their own website that can publish to, expect us to follow them on Twitter to get all of the information. TUAW is the worst offender, from what I've seen.

[alskiontheweb]

if (Life != Twitter && Life != Facebook) then Life = Freedom

[Magallanes]

The problem with twitter is the lack of business model.

So, what's the point to keep a service without any monetary return but expenses?

[FranklinH10]

Isn't being a twit a bad thing? People in England must think it's HAlarious that people in the States are calling themselves twitterers as they tweet each other.
Surely there must be a site somewhere called Wanker where people can wank each other.

[eltoro2827]

ashton kutcher is a horses a**

[bag_of_hammers]

You sound fat.

[techgeekdude]

Apparently, he's not alone. Twitter is kind of a waste especially considering that there are some who are "buying" followers. Just found out today that there's actually a thriving business that allows people to jack up their followers. The consequence of course is that these followers are legitimate people who then become subject to spam.

[erikhiga]

Big deal! I closed my twitter account months ago!

[astroot]

Actually, he just deleted his "public" @trent_reznor account. He has another account that he only gives access to people he knows personally.

[gefitz]

Reznor's, and many other artists that seem to be tweaking with the music business's model, mode is exactly the opposite of what Twitter has to offer.

Now, if he could find a way to SELL access to his tweets...it would be the sort of "value-added content" that he talks about making money on.

[tile00]

twitter is lame. anyone that tweets needs to get a life and stop being so self absorbed. no one cares what you just did. people that need to know what i'm doing have direct access to me via multiple platforms.

[Tansho]

And this is considered news worthy? Who really cares if some rock star has decided to stop using Twitter. Not I.

[cvaldes1831]

This is newsworthy because Trent Reznor was one of the early pioneers of a well-known entertainer using Web 2.0/social networking technologies to connect with fans (ironically he recently received a Webby Award for his efforts).

To have a prominent trailblazer abandon social networking after he helped bring it to the mainstream could be a red flag. Over the past ten years, I've noticed that online communities scale poorly and it is noteworthy that today's social networks are still not capable of managing troublemakers.

[The_Decider]

No such thing as web 2.0. Get off the buzzword bandwagon.