Twitter? Really?

Posted by Zeke Kamm on 4/05/09 • Categorized as The Latest

Twitter my back and I’ll Twitter yours.

My wife says I’m a dichotomy (or maybe she said I should have a lobotomy – wink). One, or rather, two items on the long list of things she finds dichotomous about my oh so fascinating (or maybe she said irritating) persona is that I am drawn so strongly to the past, particularly the early 1900’s. I am constantly on the look out for do-dads and trinkets and such from that by-gone era. Yet I am obsessed with technology. Perhaps in a past life I was an inventor. Maybe I invented cork or shoe laces. That would be cool to be the guy who invented shoe laces, right? I mean, at the time that must have been the bleeding edge of technology.

However, some tech just kind of sits out there, embraced by the popular culture, and it never really connects with me. In particular: Twitter. I just never got into it. I never read any articles about it, never tried to figure out why people like it. I already have a general disconnect with people as a group. I don’t want to. I just get uncomfortable and start making jokes as a protection mechanism. Perhaps that’s why I find it easier to connect with the popular culture from the past. Plus the past can’t call and ask me to help them move out of their apartment.

Right. So I was on the phone with one of my best friends and super-rad writer, consultant, and SEO guru Marc Baumann talking tech, as the two of us so often do, and he mentioned Twitter. He thinks Twitter is an important technology, a fundamental thread in the T-shirt that is the new World (to paraphrase). If Marc thinks I should be using Twitter, than I should probably start using Twitter. He explained why and although I understood it at the time, I’m having difficulty finding a combination of letters that would make up the words that would allow me to explain it to you. I guess I can boil it down to: dissemination of concise ideas in real time. Good enough for me.

Wait. What? Each twit can only be 140 characters INCLUDING spaces? I can’t possibly communicate with such limitations! Just thinking of being hog tied as such makes me puke a little in my mouth! I won’t do it. Alright I’ll try.

I’m asking my dear readers who are already on Twitter to “follow me.” If you follow me, I’ll follow you. I’m not sure what I’ll be twitting or twittering or twittling about, but I’ll try to make it have value; be informational, humorous, thought provoking even. So click on the follow me link in the beginning of this paragraph and when you get to my Twitter page select follow me. Then when I go to Twitter I’ll follow you. We’ll be connected. Just don’t ask me to help you move out of your apartment.