If you stalkers out there can’t get enough of Facebook to keep up with what your friends are doing, check out Twitter. Twitter is defined by Wikipedia as “a social networking and micro-blogging service,” but it’s basically like having a cross-platform away message that can be updated almost anywhere. You can send in updates to your Twitter profile page via the Twitter website, your cell phone or instant messenger.
To better explain what Twitter is, you have 140 characters to answer the question, “What are you doing?” For example you might say, “Trying to hit the fairway at Chapel Ridge and avoid being struck by lightning” if you were golfing yesterday like I was. When you update your Twitter, your friends can opt to receive notifications and you can be notified when they update theirs. You can see what they’re doing and they can check to see what you’re up to. Twitter has definitely tapped into the viral power of blogs, too, enabling people to add Twitter widgets to their blogs and websites so others (and non-Twitterers) can see what they and their friends are doing.
I decided to try Twitter and see what all the buzz is about, so I’ll be updating my Twitter regularly over the next week. For all you stalkers out there, this is your free pass into my world. Seriously though, I think it definitely will prompt some interesting questions, beyond what I’ve already begun to wonder.
As we are more and more connected to the world we live in via email, cell phones, Blackberries, instant messaging, social networks, etc, etc. this begs the question–How much is too much? Personally, I don’t really care what most people are doing every minute and hour or their lives, even if they are my friends. Then again, if a bunch of my friends started twittering, I could see myself getting caught up in it.
As these new social networking sites and connection tools have arisen, they bring into existence new forms of social currency, or cool points. For example, you can already make some basic assumptions about someone (18-24) that’s on Facebook and has less than 50 or 100 friends–they probably don’t have many REAL friends either, and aren’t fun to hang out with (nevermind the fact that maybe they were a late adopter and never bothered to add many of their friends, or they are trying to be a “rebel” and not have a lot of Facebook friends). There’s cool and uncool Facebook profiles too, and people (myself included) make judgments about others based only on one page that may or may not reflect how they really are.
Another question is how will Twitter affect politics? Politicians are already getting involved and I stumbled upon Barack Obama’s Twitter page almost immediately after signing up. Will a politician be seen as more “in touch” with the younger people if he has a Twitter? Will many people read it? As of this writing, Obama has about 2,500 “followers.” Will this influence voting? Will people read the Twitters of all candidates, not just the candidate they support? Does Obama actually update his Twitter or does someone do it for him? All burning questions, which I could comment on but will save for another time. I’ve written too much already and would love to hear any thoughts you had about Twitter and this stuff.
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