Twitter reconsidered
Posted on February 12, 2008
Filed Under Twitter, Writing
When I first heard of Twitter, and for months afterward, my reaction was simple—sounds like a real waste of time. A 140-character limit. What’s that, two or three sentences? I mean, who the hell cares most of the time what you’re doing at this very minute? It didn’t help that most of the examples I heard seemed to focus on the trivial. “I’m having a Quarter Pounder at McDonald’s. With fries and a Coke. Yum!”
Give me a break.
Then I read something or somebody said something. I don’t remember who or what, but it made me reconsider. Whatever, I thought I’d dive in and give Twitter a chance. For the first week I twittered several times a day, but then I tapered off to once or twice a day. I have a few followers, mostly people I know. They follow me, I follow them, and we’re all pretty sporadic.
If that’s all there was to it, Twitter wouldn’t be anything special for me. But after a few weeks, I started following a selection of folks involved in the ad industry, people I don’t know but who were quite active on Twitter and who, it turned out, often made observations that really helped me in my work as a Flash developer for an ad agency. It might be a link to a website or a blog post, or comments on a new commercial or advertising campaign. Whatever, it involved me in a wider world of advertising than I was exposed to in my day-to-day work.
Little things here and there. Nudges. There’s stuff to learn and to be excited about. And it’s fun.
Now I have an experiment in mind.
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