The Art of Twitter
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Why I love it:
I love Twitter. To me it’s the perfect web socialization tool: I don’t have to stop in the middle of whatever I’m writing to respond to a chat (or have that horrible jump when yahoo shrieks “Uh oh!” at me) and it allows me to call attention to my daily work while paying attention to the daily projects of people who interest me for a broad variety of reasons. I can also easily communicate with another person free of excess concern about disrupting them – on Twitter, you expect and accept a delayed response even while you’re enjoying it’s remarkable immediacy.
Why others may object to it:
While some users have already fallen into the trap of the spam can, doing @replies calling attention to all sorts of crap of no interest to the reader, most are easily blocked and thus ignored. And twitter was not intended for marketing, but social networking which of course makes marketers drool because of direct and legitimate contact. Even so, once the buzzwords are cleared away and it’s down to you and the screen before you, you’re stuck with this: what on earth do you have to say that’s 140 characters or less that someone else has any reason to care about?
The point is, you don’t. Nobody does, really. When you post to Twitter, you are issuing your voice into a giant conversation and sooner or later someone will hear you and what you say, however trivial you may find it, will resonate with that person. That person may even reply back, and now, a conversation has begun!
How I use it:
Twitter, for me, is a work-from-home salvation. It allows me to maintain tenuous social contact without interrupting my work flow. I can also post – just once, not repeatedly usually – single blog posts I’ve written for the day. I can post items listed in my Etsy shop (not more than three per hour because then you run into the annoying zone.) Above all, I can see what other people are talking about. It really does make me feel less lonely. I can ask questions and have them answered. I’ve made real, person-to-person connections with the individuals on my twitter, and sometimes the banality of the lives of others is comforting to me, it reminds me that there are normal people out in the world doing their best to live their lives as I am.
It is not just a marketing tool. Its social networking, because of its abbreviation, connects you in a way that is less spy-like and in some ways more tangible than even private emailing. I am grateful for this quality.
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you give some great reasons…now to figure out if i have room for any more minor interruptions. it isn’t twitter of course, but my inability to structure my day. thanks for sharing.
I often use twitter to chat back and forth with people. I also enjoy typing random things that come into my head
i still haven’t caught on to twitter… thanks for this article!
http://www.alexladydesigns.etsy.com
[...] and accept a delayed response even while you’re enjoying it’s remarkable immediacy.Magickal Realism, Oct [...]