Wednesday, March 16, 2011

10 Thoughts After 10 Days of Twittering


Here's my first ten reactions to Twitter after opening an account and engaging in the world of Twitter for my first 10 days.

1. Quick Source for Emerging News - During this first 10 Days the serious disaster in Japan struck and people were quick to tweet and retweet news as well as general sentiments and thoughts ranging from the most current news on earthquakes, nuclear meltdowns, and tsunami waves coming to the United States.

2. Serious News not Always Handled Seriously - Some people seem to love to combine the trending twitter keywords into little paragraphs. So you see a shockingly high number of tweets that read "#whosaiditwasokay to promote #super8movie when we should #prayforjapan."

3. Love to Talk to My Friends on Twitter, But... - ...Only so many friends are on twitter, so the opportunity to engage with a wider group is limited to what would be available on Facebook.

4. A Different Type of Conversation - Even thought you're missing some of your facebook friends, the twitter tone is different and there's more freedom to discuss and interact. Facebook seems like a great place to talk about the simplest personal things in a public forum (here's a picture of my dog/baby; a funny story from today; can't wait to hang out with friends, etc) where as Twitter provides the freedom to tell a joke, share links to websites, discuss news, etc. in a way that would seem inappropriate for the friendly and non-complicated cordial environment on facebook.

5. Welcome to Twitter World - I'll admit, that pre-twitter there was an avenue of conversation that I was missing out on. There are a few people who I know who are on twitter and use the site actively. I am so glad to be able to connect with them through this medium that they are already long-active in using. With the frequent twitterers there is a comforting sense of connection that I feel seeing and knowing what every day life looks like as told through their tweets. And beyond those people, now I can talk to Ellen Page or Anderson Cooper...if I wanted to.

6. A lot of talking but is anyone saying anything? I feel like there is a lot of personal promotion (I'll admit I readily share links to strangecultureblog.com as part of the backstage pass, which is the premise for the twitter account) and if it's not promotion its a lot of talk about stuff that an entire page of tweets might have nothing worth commenting on or retweeting.

7. A lot of talking but is anyone listening? The ease of slapping up a 140 character tweet is pretty easy, but does anyone care you can't figure out what icecream you want, or your tired, or your sad about x, y, or z? Twitter creates the potential for community, but it's hard to hear in all the static.

8. It's easy to tweet. One of the greatest things about twitter is how easy it is to slap up a message. Not only is the forum so open you can say practically anything, it was easy to set up an accont to message from my phone or via text message.

9. It's easy to tweet something stupid. In your head it seemed so good until you hit send and it was up. Or maybe you had post-tweet regret days later. All I know is that things seemed so smart, creative, or funny when I was typing them and then I later felt like my message could easily have been misconstrued or just missed completly. Not to mention, there's a pressure to be funny or insightful in 140 words and sometimes what seemed great ends up falling very, very flat.

10. A hope for connections. I look forward to having a new avenue to stay connected to StrangeCulture readers and establish more readers through Twitter. I think the potential is there, but I am still learning, and pleased to have acquired a healthy group of followers right off the bat. I think the opportunity for people to engage with StrangeCulture post before and after they are written can extend the conversation, and provide some quick feedback that I look forward to hearing and kicking back and forth. Not completly sold on the magic of twitter, but am still willing to stay in the game.
I invite you to follow me...username is StrangeCulture.

1 comment:

Amy said...

Amazingly more people are listening than you might think...they just don't respond. It's a weird thing to get used to. glad you're on Twitter now!