I am a Twit
I signed up for a Twitter account ages ago, fiddled with it a couple of times, and forgot about it. It seemed neat enough, but I couldn’t see the benefit.
Now I can. In the last few days, there’s been a sudden burst of activity there - most importantly, by people I know. Having added them as friends, now I can see the benefit.
As I strolled home from dropping B off at school this morning, I checked my phone - it was crammed with fresh messages from Twitter friends in various time zones. As I read through them all, the phone buzzed with the arrival of more messages. “This is great!” I thought. It’s quicker and more succinct than reading people’s blogs; it’s immediate, intimate, and informal. It’s fun. Your pals in your pocket.
Twenty minutes of phone buzzing later, I had to change my Twitter settings so that only direct messages were forwarded to my phone. Pals in pocket is nice, but you can only take so much constant updating from the rest of the world.
But how fab to have all this in my pocket whenever I like. How great to have the ability to SMS people via the web (using the direct message feature) for free; to be able to post thoughts to the web on the move, even using my ancient handset.
There are a few things that are a little confusing. It’s not easy to see the difference between “Friends” and people you are “Following” (they seem to be one and the same by default, but the number of friends is not always the same as the number of followers). I think a skim through the Twitter commands help page might help me get a better grip on it all.
Twitterlicious.
Labels: tech
