I was introduced to the Twitter phenomenon sometime in September by a coworker, but as a veteran web journalist I was skeptical and pretty much slagged it off as an annoying tool to validate obsessive-compulsive behavior. If it wasn’t for Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research and web strategist, I wouldn’t have bothered with micro-blogging. His tweeting and followers in the thousands prove just how well it must work for him (Owyang practically tweets all day).
After all, Facebook’s built-in tweeting widget would reach my social network if I felt like sharing between stretching sessions and working on the next web solution. But Facebook’s restrictive tweeting system couldn’t do what I wanted it to do. It presented me as a third person with a bizarrely solipsistic inquiry toward my own ego. A “Jackie is…[fill in the blanks]” permanent feature lacks the flexibility for the kind of creative expressionism that would come naturally through repetitive prompting. At some point I found the poetic side of me protesting at the rigidity of their tweet widget, and alas I would once again be destined to resign to the fact that it simply is the way it is on Facebook! I can just about manage say “Jackie is annoyed with this apedung widget!” without joining the petition group to remove “is” on Facebook’s tweeting feature.
Sometimes Jackie “isn’t” and doesn’t want to speak in the third person; she would like to tweet about an interesting event without drawing the parallel back to herself!
Moreover, like some of today’s multi-role professionals who wear many hats, I run several websites and have challenges managing updates on all those sites amidst the hours I barter out to feed myself in order to sustain my much-appreciated existence in mortal form. To illustrate, I could be running a sports training blog, a cooking blog, a professional blog, and a travel blog separately for segregation and branding purposes.
But I am essentially the same individual with finite minutes and hours in a day, my tweets should be syndicated to all the websites I have a presence at to maintain a sense of connectivity with my readers. While Twitter may not serve everyone, it seems to be the answer to those with a fragmented virtual presence who may want to maintain a consistent sense of dynamism without the time to slave away at individual website updates.
Do check out my tweets under “What I Am Doing” on the right, or get it on the fun at Twitter.com
