As you may have noticed on the sidebar on the right side of this page I am now "Tweeting" (or is it twittering?). I started doing it because every day I read several marketing newsletters and many blogs and social media is basically the only thing any of them talk about. For those of you who are not receiving marketing newsletters daily and don't know the first thing about marketing--or care to know it--Wikipedia defines it as:
...an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning, as people share their stories, and understandings.
In other words, Facebook, MySpace, blogging, etc, etc.
I could go on and on, but I'll spare you--if you want to learn more about it you can read my other blog, Mizz Information, or google it and you too can become an "expert" (I have written 3 articles for EzineArticles and am now an "Expert").
At any rate, lately all I seemed to be reading about was Twitter. Don't ask me why but it's apparently considered to be a trend or asset in the business world, so in an effort to always keep my resume fresh, naturally I had to get with the times and start tweeting.
Two things about Twitter: first, I have no idea what the actual value of it is. I personally see it as sort of an art form reminiscent of a gumball machine that dispensed--for a quarter--pieces of trash in little plastic balls. In other words, I see Twitter as a completely FIO way of being some kind of modern day poet.
The thing is, like Christopher Goodwin's gumballs (see link above), ultimately people's tweets seem to me to be the literary version of small pieces of trash encapsulated in little plastic bubbles. Take a look at my "tweets" in the sidebar: you basically have I think 150 characters to make some kind of witty quip or otherwise somehow relevant observation. I like it because I personally am entertained by my own witty quips, but as far as the overall point or value of Twitter, I'm stumped.
It's funny to me the way people I see as being big guns in the business or marketing worlds seem to place a high level of importance on social media stuff I think of as relevant only to teenagers. Penelope Trunk, uber business woman and 6-figure blog to book deal getter, is doing it. Barak Obama is doing it (or at least someone posing as him is doing it). I won't waste anymore time looking up who else is doing it; I think it's safe to assume most writers or marketing people or just plain anyone trying to be down with the times is doing it.
Twitter is, for me, at the same time entertaining and boring. Yes, it's kind of fun to write any random thought in 150 words or less and release it into the universe, and to read other people's random thoughts. Then again, are other people's random thoughts really that interesting? Or are mine, for that matter? It's one thing if you're 16 and trying to stay in constant contact with your "peeps" and the minutiae of your life is all you talk about anyway, but do adults really have anything interesting to tweet about?
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