Trick or Tweet
A column about twitter. Am going to write the entire thing as a series of 140 character paragraphs. Wish me luck. Not so good at brevity.
When I first heard about twitter, I thought it was a ridiculous idea. “Going shopping”, “Eating food”. Who cares?
Is it just me or does each one of these paragraphs sound like a haiku? New insight, will consider tweeting it later.
But I digress. Recently I decided, in the name of relationship research, to see why 6 million unique visitors each month start tweeting.
Is it all really just people telling other random people what they are doing with every second of their day?
No. In fact, twitter is full of people posting thoughts, quotes, links to articles, and opinions on every topic imaginable.
Here are some of my recent favorites:
-“Mid-life Crisis Amidst Recession: Porsche is out of the question, will have to settle for mountain bike.”
-“Yeah, apparently the Joker in Dark Knight wrote those AIG contracts. Why can’t I have a bonus for largest company loss in history?”
-“Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple.” Albert Einstein”
-“Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships, that is why good ideas are always initially resisted.” Hugh MacLeod
-“We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.” – Henry Thoreau
Additionally, you can search for a topic and see what is being said about it. A search for AIG reveals many fascinating links and comments:
-Former AIG executive: “Why I deserved my bonus.” http://is.gd/nWWd
-I want to get a job at AIG…where else can you get a $1M bonus for nuking your own firm!
– Senator Grassley supports taxpayer-assisted suicide for the folks that took the bonuses at AIG.
Some use the service to keep their friends in the know about the tiny details of their lives, giving new meaning to the abbreviation TMI.
For example: “Just ate dinner, now to sleep” and “Buying shoes at mall”. Is this possibly interesting to anyone? Doubtful.
One common reservation that some folks have—impossible to follow all tweets. But that’s not the point.
Perfectly acceptable approach: pop in and pop out, scan a few tweets, tweet a few of your own. Choose the ones you like only.
One way to think of it is word diarrhea, not so pleasant. But could also be like giant dinner buffet: try whatever looks good, ignore rest.
My advice: It’s fun to take in small doses. A cacophony of virtual social interaction—high decibels. Sample sparingly, but sample.
What can YOU squeeze into 140 characters?
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hehe nice. maybe we can all go twitter that our facebook statuses have changed…