I’ve been getting into the Twitter lark recently. Like many, I kept it a good wingspan away for a long time. It’s just Facebook statuses, after all! The original reason that made me sign up has flown right out of my head, but for whatever reason I have been tweeting (a post on Twitter is a ‘tweet’) away merrily for a couple of weeks now.
Here I am. If I come across a mind-bendingly easy way of putting a stream into the side of this blog, then I will consider it.
One thing which makes Twitter distinctive from Facebook statuses is that you don’t need to know someone to sign up to their updates (unless they have made them private). So lots of famous people are tweeting, and you can - in an ever-so-slightly stalkerish way - tap into the minutae of their lifes. If they ruffle their feathers accordingly. So far I have Followed Chesney Hawkes, John Sentamu, Lizo Mzimba, Bill Bailey and Dave Walker among others. I did have Lance Armstrong, but he tweeted too much and I got bored of him.
I like it. It feels quite democratic, and can encourage a more realistic perspective on how famous people are still people. They have daily lives involving gas meters and ice-creams and watching TV.
It also feels suitable for putting more trivial updates on than a Facebook status does. Only people who have consciously signed up to your tweets will be fed them, so they can’t complain if you do too many. Whereas, there are many other reasons to have people as contacts on Facebook than just to hear about their coffee breaks, so there you have to limit the triviality a little.
Tweet tweet.
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