OK I am finally joining Twitter. I have a deep-seated revulsion towards the trendy and the ephemeral, and I worry that Twitter will be both, but I have decided to take part in a social revolution (of sorts) while it is actually happening. Normally I am very late to anything hip; music is a classic example: I just purchased the Death Cab for Cutie album, the one with “Crooked Teeth” and “I Will Follow You into the Dark.” By now I have to suppose that they are no longer considered cool, having transgressed into popularity, and are wallowing in the backlash. I did the same thing with Rage Against the Machine; by time I finally bought The Battle of Los Angeles, they had broken up. That’s better I suppose than when I went through my Bob Dylan phase—nothing like being into an artist some 40 years after his first record came out.
But I digress, which will be much easier now that I am twitting. I suspect I will become one of those zombie-like texters, oblivious to the world around as I periodically work my thumbs over my cell phone. But since I don’t have a MySpace page, or a Facebook entry, nor do I post videos to YouTube or tag content via Digg or deli.co.us, I suppose this will have to be my one serious entry into the newest world of social media. (This blog, needless to say, doesn’t count.)
I have resisted the so-called Web 2.0 for so long because my Internet, the one used for business-to-business marketing, does not seem to mesh well with these newfangled gadgets. Clearly I am no Luddite, but a healthy reserve towards the new or the hip is important in my place in the marketing world. We do not need to be early adopters, since our audience is not. Only when a technology or capability has become accepted, well-known, and widespread do we employ it on behalf of our clients.
Still, Twitter seems irresistible. Quick hits of updates; a micro-blog of near-real time. How cool is that? It’s like a web cam without pictures, and without being tied to the PC (although yes tied to the cell phone, but that goes everywhere regardless).
So I guess I will give it a try. Maybe I can be more timely than with my blog.
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2 comments:
Funny - I just joined twitter this morning - and much like you - with conflicted feelings and resistance. A colleague highly recommended it along with a few networking sites. I'm already on LinkedIn, have my own website, and belong to various groups and forums. But she convinced me to "go-ahead". I'm open to learning. So I'm curious what your experience has been over this almost year?
Hi Ron:
Sorry it took so long to respond, I thought I should actually use Twitter again for a bit before I replied. Just kidding! Well, not really. The fact is that, although I occasionally post to it and I am following a few people, I really have not taken the time to fully utilize the features that might prove interesting. I have not gone out of my way to track down who "twits" and whether I should be following them; nor have I typically been in situations where I could have utilized it to plumb the wisdom of the crowds, i.e. "I'm in Austin, does anybody know of a good sushi restaurant?" So essentially I am non-plussed about Twitter; I certainly don't hate it, but I can't really say I love it. Sorry to be so vague but that, as they say, is the truth.
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