Do you use Twitter?

Yes I do. Two for work, one for fun.

Happy to share if anyone wants it.

 

Erica Jong just followed me. I figure she's looking for a book deal.

Twitter is becoming very fun.
As I explained to a non-Internet person, it's like instead of having 6 degrees of separation, Twitter narrows it down to 2 or 3.
And its not about getting a bazillion followers; it is about targeting the followers who suit your needs and interests, no matter what that number is.
The one frustrating thing for me is the name brand types who have tons of followers but they themselves only follow say, 80 of their friends. They don't use the categories: friends, fans, news, etc. to read only what they want, when they want.
They are using the old model. Dorks.

I pick up one newb a week, someone with almost no following, but potential.
I have about 6 shameless promoters glom onto me each week. Twitter either kicks them off or I simply do not follow them.
I add one or two (in)famous people each week who may or may not follow me back, but probably not. I drop about one famous person a week who I've written about enough (full posts, tweets, retweets--other social media) that if they don't care for the free publicity, I don't care to have another non-follower.
Then their are about 3-4 fans that follow me each week. They want something from me but I don't from them. I'll add them if they don't embarrass me in the stream by espousing extremist/sexist/racist stuff.

 

@fangirl PM me your handle. Please

 

Yes. I do.

 

I'm on it. I'm sporadically active. @snowy @fangirl, hook a bodkin up with a pm-ed handle, por favor.

 

Nope. It's a bore​

 

I must be a crusty old bastard already in life, because I loathe Twitter. Which is odd since I tend to love instant-gratification type things, but it just seems so... Flippant, and it's hard to take it seriously. Also, it tends to be a popularity contest where the loudest and wittiest win out over any kind of composed thought (largely due to its ultra-short format) - it's a little like LiveJournal's babbling, ADHD, pre-adolescent ritalin-chomping cousin.

 

Without meaning to sound obnoxious and hoping you read both snowy and Baraka_Guru's posts (above), your post tells me you don't know how to use Twitter. Until I cared about learning, I didn't either. WTF with those stupid-looking hashtags? Who do those ego-driven so and so's think they are, glomming onto me selling their wares? Bugger off!

Then when I took the time to get to know what Twitter could do for me if I did a bit for it, then it became valuable.

I have diverse interests to say the least, so I have all manner of folks I follow and who follow me. What is most important is that there is a give and take relationship. Yes, I produce original content but I also follow some great content-generating and sharing people and I retweet their stuff to my following who in turn retweet to their followings, etc. I also follow "regular" people with whom I share common interests.

Right now, my feed is filled with real-time individuals sharing with me what it is like to live in an active state of war. It is not pleasant to read. But I read each one because I find value in that knowledge.
Because I write about TV/pop culture, there has been news coming out of the fall television upfronts. Fodder for a half dozen (semi) original posts for me to write.
There are people reminding me that those Nigerian girls that were kidnapped are not yet all returned.
There are beautiful nature photographs.
There are funny quips by entertainers I enjoy.
And yes, I have friends on there, though I am more likely to connect with them through Facebook.

 

I like Twitter because I can kill a fourth of my work day reading bite sized nuggets of first person narrative about:

Life in various warzones
Life as an transsexual activist
Life as a white feminist
Life as a black feminist
Life as an asian feminist
Life as a hispanic feminist
Life as a white male feminist
(those last six are so different in such interesting ways)
Local politics
National politics
Literature
Cryptosecurity
holy shit this could be a long list so I'm going to stop now but you get the idea

I can say without a doubt that my use of twitter has had a significant impact for the better on my ability to understand and sympathize with people whose experiences I couldn't even begin to imagine otherwise.

 

Just looked at mine, fortunately Opera did the auto-login thing and spared me the five seconds I probably wasn't willing to spend looking up the username and password in my file. Five tweets in three years isn't bad. I have a hard enough time typing a ridiculous term like "tweet" in the first place....goes back to porch to yell at those damn kids walking on my lawn wearing those new-fangled walkman things.

sounds like part of me is as old as my knees seem to think they are some days.

edit: it can be an option to share the photography thing though, so I may give that a look.

 

Twitter, you say?

Hmm.

Does it have an edit button I can abuse for months at a time?

 

I really like how you summed this up, BvH!

 

Hugh Laurie makes Twitter worth my time. If you want to talk succinct & witty, the guy's the complete package.

 

I'm trying to wean myself off twitter

 

Fun, isn't it?