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Twit or Tweet

writer x

writer xI’m still wrestling with the pros and cons of Twitter. So far, I got mostly cons.

For those of you lucky enough to have been living on a deserted island for the last six months, Twitter (Twitter.com) is a free social networking service that can best be described as instant messaging on steroids. In 140 words or less, you can “tweet” any of your followers about what you’re doing at any single moment of any given day.

Like, who cares?

That’s what I thought. Initially.

And still do. Sort of.

It’s kind of fun sometimes to read some of the strange “tweets” that scroll across your computer screen or your phone. If you have a gadget, you can even add it to your blog.   Again, it’s all free stuff. It just takes a few minutes of set-up and a day to get used to.

On a good day, I might send one, maybe two, tweets, usually to let anyone who cares know that I’ve posted something new on my blog. Exciting, right? Also on a good day, I might spend five minutes reading some of the tweets that I’ve received and here’s the part where Twitter gets semi-annoying…

All day long, you’ll get invitations in your email from people wishing to “follow” your tweets. They come from all over the world and, mostly, they’re from people you don’t know. Unless the person is peddling porn (and there are plenty of those!), I generally click the “follow” button. I mean, what’s the harm?

But, here’s where it gets kind of squirrely. Unless you’re unemployed, how can you possibly follow the tweets of 500, 1000, 5000 or more people? And why on God’s green earth would you want to? There are some people on Twitter with literally tens of thousands of followers. Those are the people I try to avoid—they’re usually selling something and they’re consumed with amassing “followers” like it’s some kind of cult. And, they are under the delusion that all 100,000 of their followers are sitting around reading every one of their tweets.

I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again: Twitter is like being in a crowded room, a lot of people talking but no one really listening.  And Twitter, like anything, is okay in moderation but it certainly doesn’t consume my day.

Am I missing something?

::Writer X also writes at The 100 Most Annoying Things::

October 10, 2009 8:43 am

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