So you all know about Twitter, right? It's this new internet thing where you are essentially "micro-blogging" in 140 characters or less. People sign up to "follow you" and you can "follow" others, which means you can see what they're Twittering (or "Tweeting") about. Really, it's just another abbreviated form of social networking, of staying connected to people. Companies (CNN) and celebrities (Oprah, Ashton Kutcher) are Twittering. Bloggers are Twittering. Non-bloggers are Twittering. Seems everyone is all a-Twitter these days. On the recent Space Shuttle flight, an astronaut even sent the first-ever Twitter message from outer space!
There's even a whole new vocab to deal with. A "Tweet" is a Twitter message. "Tweeters" and "Tweeps" and "Tweeple" are people who Twitter. The "Tweetdom" and "Twittersphere" refer to the wider world of Twitter. And so it goes, with new terminology springing up almost daily. And I thought I had problems keeping up with teenage slang -- both American AND French -- and now I've got this new language to learn.
I have fun with Twitter although it can get to be time-consuming -- reading messages, posting my own messages, and sometimes posting responses to other people's messages. Some of the people I follow are good friends and fellow bloggers I like to read; some are people who post info or tips on subjects that interest me; and I do follow a handful of celebrity bloggers like Oprah and Larry King. During the US Presidential Election I followed Barack Obama and now that he's in office I'm still on his list and get an occasional Tweet from our new Prez. Kinda makes me feel special, it does.
I am still learning some of the finer points of Tweetville and I'm certain I'm probably not leveraging its power as well as I could be, in terms of building an audience for my blog, business and any future books I may write. But that's just a learning curve and in time I'll figure it out. By way of an example, for a long time after I first got on Twitter, I couldn't figure out how to get notifications when people I was following were posting new material because I live over here in France and thus the cell phone notification features that Twitter provides does not work for me. Then I found out about TweetDeck which is a 3rd-party application that lets you manage all your Twitter activities in once place, and now I'm getting more out of the experience. There are many of these 3rd-party apps out there to help you expand your Twittering horizons.
What just occurred to me is how damned personal Twitter can get. Like, people will drop these little TMI bombs on you, and nowhere is this more obvious than people telling you their reproductive business -- and in under 140 characters, too. I mean, yes, it's totally cool that Lance Armstrong has just Twittered today that his girlfriend had their baby last night... certainly faster and cheaper than sending out the traditional birth announcements and he managed to scoop the media on his own terms, too.
But did I really need to read -- and just before dinner, too -- that a 9-month pregnant Dooce lost her mucus plug at 7:34 pm Paris time? I love reading her blog and I know she posted that Tweet purely for shock value. She's already got a hugely successful blog that pays for her mortgage and her husband stays home and runs the blog as the family business; she has two books out; and already well over a half million Twitter followers to add to the over 1 MILLION blog visitors she gets PER MONTH. How do the rest of us compete with that? Next thing you know, she'll have her husband Tweeting photos straight from the Delivery room and THAT is something NO ONE needs to see! Do I now have to send out a Conception Attempt Tweet each time Georges and I... well, um... you know? Will you want to know if my basal body temperature is at optimum levels? I mean, I feel I'm already stretching the boundaries of privacy by divulging that we're even TRYING to have a baby. Will I now be expected to tell the Twitterverse how often we're doing it, and in what position?
I think I can already answer that. That's a big Tweeting NO. I think I can feel your palpable relief from here.
Which means that you can safely follow me on Twitter now. And I promise to keep it (reasonably) clean.
