Thursday, June 04, 2009

Twitter is where its @

Do you Tweet? I decided to give it a try a while back because some of my blogger friends are on twitter and it seemed like a harmless diversion. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, Twitter is a social networking platform that is more like a constant stream of Facebook status updates (none of the other distracting stuff that clutters up Facebook like quizzes and games and constant junk, AND no adds which is what I like about it.)

Anyway, I have been on Twitter for about six months and for most of that time had about 15 people following my updates which were sporadic at best (maybe one or two a week if I remembered. Then about three weeks ago I stumbled upon a new app for twitter called TweetDeck which I really love and unfortunately I have it running all the time in the background of my computer and every time someone sends a twitter update my computer "tweets".

I started out just following my blogger friends like Rufus and Patrick Madrid and Adoro, and Curt Jester, but then I realized that I could follow some of my favorite celebrities. Now I follow Wil Wheaton, and Kevin Pollack and Stephen Fry and Dr Will Miller (from the Bob and Tom Show). Sadly, I even got sucked into the twittering juggernaut that is @aplusk (ashton kutcher) who has pretty close to two million followers which is really ridiculous.

Suddenly, and I am not quite sure why, but I think maybe it has something to do with adoro calling me out last Friday, I have gained nearly 30 followers in the last week! I am gaining four or five followers a day?!?!?!!????? I am humbled and chagrined at the same time. I feel compelled to say witty or profound things and I have nothing witty or profound to say. So I just keep saying what I normally say. If they follow me it is what it is.

Twitter is sometimes fun; I have had a total blast following Ethan Suplee (Randy from "My Name is Earl") and his family on their trip to England and Ireland, he is quite funny and engaging as he tweets about how his daughters are reacting to English food and culture.

Twiiter is sometimes educational: I have been pleasantly surprised that Matt Damon is interested and supports ethical stem cell research. In the past two days he has posted links to articles on how to get stem cell lines everywhere other than embryos. Go Matt!

On the other end of the spectrum, Will Wheaton is a huge hockey fan so stick by stick tweets of each play-off game have been more than I could take. The rest of his tweets are fun to follow-- usually. Thank God there is some time before Hockey season is back on again.

Oh well, if you enjoy social networking, you might want to give Twitter a try.

Pax

2 comments:

Rosemary said...

Yeah, Go Matt! Does Twitter take a lot of time? Is it like writing another post?

Unknown said...

Tweets are like Facebook status updates, and Tweetdeck lets you do both at the same time. When I update my Facebook status I upload a new tweet, unless I want to put something specifically on one or the other.