Friday, October 16

Twitter

Okay, I am always late on internet trends. I am late on computer stuff as a whole. I mean it is 2009, I am starting my blog like 3 years after all the cool people did it. I am not starting it to make money, or to showoff my awesome (sarcastic) writing skills, or even to gain 1 million readers. I am doing my blog to help give me an extension on some of my thoughts and put them on the interwebs forever (or at least until "The Googles" explodes). 
So, I have a Twitter account I am @gizmoalex, and I put much of my "expression" into Twitter. Unfortunately it has also let my randomness and weirdness evolve into something that is more of a persona of myself than what I actually am. With the blog I hope to reclaim me a little bit.


I would like to say I discovered Twitter because I was part of a beta program of awesome people or something, but I just stumbled upon it cruising my regular websites I like. I made two accounts, one was going to be for work be more professional and one was going to be for me and a little sillier. The more professional one took a turn for the worst in a very bad way. See the evidence here. It was basically me or my daughter mashing keys and then me saying "Get to da choppa" in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice.Internet meme video here.
So my other "silly account" was there. I did not follow many people at first, and I was like "What is the big deal"?. Twitter seemed boring. I was instantly bored with it and frustrated with the fail whale (Twitter website not working) so I started looking at other social media like Blip, Jango, and Plurk. After some time I revisited Twitter and started following more people. I suddenly saw the value in Twitter, YOU MAKE IT WHAT YOU WANT IT TO BE.I am interested in technology, videogames, movies, weird comedy, being a good person, etc. So I started following other people that are involved in what I find interesting or are Tweeting about it. 
After that Twitter turned into a whole different beast. I follow more people now, and I am actually building relationships with awesome people I probably never would have met otherwise. I follow all sorts of different people and I really believe they all bring value to me and I enjoy connecting with them.
Twitter is also super valuable for their search results. If I use Google to search "Where the Wild Things Are" it would probably pull up sites referencing the book and the new movie. If I use Twitter to search that, I get short blips on what real people are saying about the movie. For me they are both valuable, but more of a real time relevance is exponentially more helpful. Twitter usually has trending topics so all you have to do is look on the right side of the Twitter page and that says the topics people are talking about the most. You do not know why they are referencing "Kanye" so you click on it and find he has embarrassed himself once again and you find out how he did it.
The last thing I want to leave you with is how to use Twitter. Say whatever you want on it, try to find out your company's policy on Tweeting and if it could cause any issues with your job. The tool I normally use to Tweet is SocialScope. It is a Twitter client for my Blackberry and it also integrates my Facebook timeline. I also have been using Seesmic it is a desktop application that runs on Adobe Air. I prefer it to Tweetdeck. If you use iPhone you have a ton of apps to choose from, but some suggestions are Twittelator Pro, Tweetie 2, or I like Twitteriffic. If your phone isn't super fancy (which is okay) you can always use your mobile web to Tweet or you can Tweet via text message. If you have any questions contact me on Twitter or comment and I will reply as soon as I can. Until next time muchachos.

1 comment:

  1. Yah, man, I came and went on twitter quite a few times. Been doing it for a while, but deleted an account with several hundred followers because I was tired of spam an lack of interraction.

    Eventually I realized I was just being petulant and started using it as a quick and slightly more interractive RSS feed of all the stuff I love. I carried over a few rerlationships with good people, but then made a ton more once I just relaxed.

    I do the pop culture blog thing now as a hobby and get get the occasional shout-out from the famous on twitter. It's totally correct this it is as awesome as one makes it. And understand the limitations.

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