Friday, October 9, 2009

The Forcing of the Twitter



I joined Twitter this week. I'd been thinking about doing it for a while; not for personal reasons but because one of these days I'm going to need to look for a job again and I know employers sometimes use it to communicate with applicants. I've also heard of social media-related jobs only being posted on Twitter and Facebook (or posted in those places first) and I figure that could potentially be useful. However, that's not why I signed up right now. My reason was much simpler: I had to for an assignment for my social media class. There you have it.

So I'm on Twitter now and I have to say I'm really not sure what all the hubbub is about. I'm "following" (as it's called) a few people that I knew had Twitter accounts and I'll be following some organizations for the class assignment, but honestly when I think about going out and finding lots of people to follow and trying to get people to follow me I'm really not all that inspired. First, I live in the dark ages when it comes to cell phones (I don't have a smartphone, Internet access, or use texting) so I won't be doing the mobile thing with Twitter and that makes it just another Web site to check. I have no desire to know what any celebrity is doing at any particular moment; in fact I can't really think of ANY individual that I'd like to know what they're doing ALL the time. I tried to think of some organizations I'd like to follow outside of the class assignment but so far even there I've come up empty. One organization I thought of was K-LOVE, the radio station I listen to; I think they do more with Facebook than Twitter but still, they're there. I looked at their Twitter page but while I like listening to the station and hearing their stories on the radio I'm really not into following artists and all that so I'm not sure what following them on Twitter would accomplish.

Maybe in the future I'll find more use for Twitter as a communication tool. For now it seems like a lot of people use it just to toot their own horn... I already use this blog for that!

7 comments:

  1. first twitter, next it will be FACEBOOK! ;p
    i don't do the twitter thing. i have heard other twitterers -or is it tweeters?- say they follow retail stores to keep informed of sales and/or specials.

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  2. I think it should be Twiters. ;-)

    I already told my professor that Twitter is one thing but he'll have to drag me kicking and screaming to Facebook. Hopefully there won't be any assignments that require that!

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  3. I'm on FB, mainly because most of my relatives/friends are and it's a quick way to check up and see how every is doing. They don't have blogs, so it's easy for me to drop in on FB and see what's going on in their lives and say "Hi." Whereas, they keep up on me with my blog. Lol. Twitter, eh, no use for it.

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  4. i love facebook, have had issues checking twitter, i just can't remember to do it!!!

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  5. I have no more room in my life for another social networking site! You are a brave woman. That pecan pie looks TASTY! Hope your hubby had a great day!

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  6. I have a Facebook account for family reasons, but I'm hardly ever on it - and I still haven't figured out all its ins and outs.

    My husband signed up for Twitter for various reasons and hardly ever uses it.

    There is a lot of "hubbub", but statistics show that only about 10% of social website members generate about 90% of the activity.

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  7. In a recent webinar, R J Jacquez from Adobe gave many good reasons for technical communicators to have a Twitter account. You can view/listen to the webinar here: http://blogs.adobe.com/rjacquez/2009/11/twitter_for_technical_communic.html.

    Hope this helps.

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Thank you for your comments!