Saturday, May 31, 2008

All A-Twitter-y

So I signed up for Twitter a week or so ago, mostly out of geek-guilt. This is the new hot thing, right? (Or, more likely, the old hot thing by this point.) So I figured I should do something with it.

But the actual "doing something" has been harder to grasp; I haven't actually twittered yet, nor am I entirely sure what I should twitter. (Is it really just "OK, now I'm in a cab." "I paid the driver, and I'm in front of the building." Oh shit, it's raining." "My hair is horrible!" ? Just a random string of whatever the person is doing at the moment? Why would anyone who isn't fourteen care?)

Today, someone actually signed up to follow me on Twitter, which is faintly ominous. (Why do social networking sites lend themselves to terms that imply uncomfortable things? All this talk of "friends" and "following" and "sharing" makes the Internet sound like one big EST encounter group, circa 1975.)

And now I feel like I need to Twitter something, because now someone's following me.

Has anyone out there used Twitter, and actually found it useful. If so...for what?

7 comments:

Bill Peschel said...

Ummm, no. I thought about it for 30 seconds, then realized that, if I didn't have an interesting enough life to blog about it, it sure as heck not interesting to Twitter about it.

Anonymous said...

I couldn't imagine using it myself, but do follow one feed, (Othar Genteman Adventurer from the Girl Genius world)...

http://twitter.com/Othar

However his life is FAR more interesting than mine.

Anonymous said...

An appropriate Penny Arcade for this post:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2008/20080423.jpg

Don't be like Gabriel.

John Klima said...

I used it to build a network of fellow librarians across the country to quick survey when I have questions or to help find information when needed.

Plus I post meaningless tweets about drinking in bars at conventions.

Robert Hutchinson said...

At the moment, I largely use it to follow the updates of a couple dozen webcomic artists. I like it as a method of just getting out a quick thought, but not to blather on and on. I don't think I've posted more than 3 in any 24-hour period.

Andrew Wheeler said...

Robert: Too true.

Of course, "Don't be like Gabriel" could be a general mantra for life, and be just as applicable.

Robert Hutchinson said...

Of course, I make my "3 in 24 hours" comment right before I decided to update the world every hour or so today on how my housework and such was progressing.

Ah, well, I blame the technology.

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