Tuesday, March 3, 2009

My Online Life

I am convinced that I haven't blogged in so long because of MICROblogging. Yeah, you read right... I wrote MICROblogging. 

In case you've been living under a rock for the past few months, or, actually, you have a REAL LIFE, and don't spend as much time in front of a computer as I do, there is this Twitter thing that I tried out on a whim, abandoned, then realized it might be good for something, and has now become this weird amalgamation of things I love and am interested in. 

About 2 or 3 months ago, Twitter was, for the most part, a domain of pseudo-nerds like myself. I saw it simply... I wrote 140 characters worth of what was going on in my life (things like, "I'm reading for tomorrow's class", "I'm writing a paper", or "I'm ignoring the sink full of dirty dishes"- inane stuff like that.) It creeped me out that folks were "following" me (yeah, that's really what they call it) and I didn't know who they were. I wanted more of my friends to be on Twitter, but I couldn't really see the need for it. After all, I was already on FaceBook

Then, I realized something... Folks were following me, and I could follow my friends, but WHO ELSE COULD I FOLLOW? It all started with the New York Times, then specific NYT columnists (David Pogue and Nicholas Kristof; I've e-mailed David Brooks urging him to tweet as well), and then tech guru types (like ReadWriteWeb.) There are the politicians (yes, Barack Obama, who I was following on Twitter before November, and Gavin Newsom, who follows me back.) There are crafty types, like the Ravelry and Etsy folks, and (newly added) the Yarn Harlot! I considered following Jimmy Fallon, but I think he's just the flavor of the week right now...

All that namedropping to say that I haven't taken a moment to sit and write paragraphs because I'm too busy reading folks' 140 character updates and writing my own (which you can follow on FaceBook- my Twitter updates directly to FB.)

Oh well.

But check out Twitter, even if you only use it as a newsfeed...

Off to see what excitement my "friends" are up to this Tuesday night!

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