Saturday, June 13, 2009

Thoughts About Twitter

Everyone in the world is apparently either on Twitter or talking about Twitter. On the site, there seems to be this weird competition to see who can have the most followers. (In case you’re one of the last four people on the planet who doesn’t know, on Twitter you post 140-character Tweets, and people can choose to follow your postings. You, of course, can also choose to follow other people or companies. Or not.)

It seems that many folks are on Twitter just to spew their babblings – there are an incredible number of inane “I woke up tired this morning” posts. But I guess for some folks that’s fine. Personally, I view Twitter as a mini blog feed – it’s a place where I can see quick information bites from folks whose opinions I value. Thus, as I said on one of my Twitter posts, I can’t imagine following even a hundred people – just the people I like to read.

As for followers, well, I guess more followers spreads “your words” out there, but so what? I write of things that interest me, and that I feel might be of interest to others. If you don’t want to read what I write, that’s totally OK. When I read a newspaper I skip many articles – I don’t think the writer cares too much. Maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t need a hundred or a thousand or a million followers. I’d rather take pride in the fact that the followers I do have chose to follow my rambling thoughts and opinions.

As I write this, I just looked at Twitter to see what’s up. Through one of the people I follow, I saw one of his people links, which led to this site. This is exactly what I’m talking about. This bozo and his bozo software (“Increase Your Followers By 10's of Thousands!” [sounds like computer Viagra to me]) are focused on one thing – MORE followers. This guy has nothing to say, nothing worth reading, is just focused on egotistical self promotion. He apparently doesn’t even write anything, just uses the software he’s pitching to create automated posts by the thousands.

So forgive me if I don’t have near as many followers as either you or Oprah do. I really just don’t care. But if you do find my writings interesting, thanks for following this blog and on Twitter. (Find us on Twitter here.)