Twitterpated

What I’m Reading Today: More wonderful John Williams's Stoner. A great antidote to what I’m talking about in today’s post.

You’ll have to forgive me. I’m a bit distracted. I dove into Twitter yesterday. Well, belly flopped might be more appropriate.

The way I got there is the same age-old story that you’ve read over and over. I wondered what it was all about. I started an account and put my location to Baghdad (wasn’t it?) when they were asking people to foil the government tracking down bloggers. (Sorry ~ I feel bad that I don’t remember the specifics.) I didn’t do much. Then I thought, maybe I’ll try it. So I did. Not much happened. I wondered, what’s so great about this? I got an agent (Hi, Rachel!) and as a result felt I should be doing more online. I felt guilty. I still wondered, what’s the big deal. I made a plan: Okay, I’ll tweet at this time and this time and this time. (You’re going to see later why this is funny.)

Then I installed Tweetdeck, a desktop app that lets you follow in realtime. (It lets you follow Facebook posts too, but that service has been intermittent. They’re trying to fix it.) I don’t know how you can really effectively do Twitter without some sort of connection on your desktop. The conversation is transient and ephemeral.

Then I tentatively tweeted a bit. I thought, I’ve got a lot of friends on Facebook. I’ll ask them for their Twitter feeds so I can follow them. Lots of great responses. (Thanks, guys!) I started following more people. But the first person to respond was friend/writer/great gal/tweeter extraordinaire Jeffe Kennedy. (Check out her great blog, Love, Power, and Fairytale Endings!) She tweeted to friends for #WW WriterWednesday a very sweet introduction. Then all hell broke loose.

But now I get it! It’s a rapid and ever evolving conversation. It’s not about announcing things to the world, a one-way conversation ~ though some people use it this way. It’s like Facebook but much faster. It’s like a dinner conversation ~ you have to pay attention and listen and try to be amusing and informative. That’s why it’s so funny to think that you can just tweet every couple of hours. It doesn’t work that way.

So, it’s also pushed me over the edge. I’m thinking about getting a blackberry. Next thing you know, they’ll be installing digital “augmentation” into my brain!

Questions of the Day: So, tweeps? Do you hang out? Are you a lurker, a shouter, a twee brilliant conversationalist?

PS  If you would like to follow me, I'd love it!  My handle is TamaraLinse. I'll follow you back.