Wednesday, May 6, 2009

A Newbies take on Twitter


OK, so like a lot of other people I've caught the twitter bug. It can certainly be very addicting. I've met so many nice folks on twitter. It's a great place to connect to others that have the same interests or even learn about something new. There is also a lot of funny people in Twitterville as well. For the most part my experience in Twitterville so far has been a pleasant one. 

I've learned many things so far but, still have a long way to go to lose my newbie status. I was almost two weeks into my twitter life before I knew that you could actually tweet to those who don't follow you. I was excited about this at first as there were many I wanted to talk to but had no idea how to get them to follow. It was a pleasant surprise that I didn't really need to do that. The one big advantage to having them follow you is the ability to send direct messages back and forth. Sometimes you may want to send personal info you don't want out in twitterland. 

So back to the idea that you can tweet everyone, even those who do not follow you. It's exciting at first, especially if your following someone you consider a VIP. You can consider yourself very lucky if you get a response from them. They have so many followers tweeting them it's almost impossible to have them respond. I know I have trouble keeping up with just my 318 followers. I don't think I could do it without using TweetDeck. I highly recommend it. Everything in one neat little package including direct messaging, referred to as DM's. 

I did make one decision and that was not to try to converse with the VIP's. I know I'm one of those people who wear their hearts on their sleeves. I know it's a stupid thing to do, but that's just who I am. If they indicate they read all tweets and still I get no response I tend to take that as a sign that I haven't said anything interesting enough to warrant a response and being the Old woman that I am I get hurt feelings. Thus the decision to give up on that one. Don't get me wrong, I still love to follow them and watch the great tweets they put out there. I just don't plan to put myself out there and feel like an idiot for thinking I would be important enough to be responded to.

Not to worry though. I have lots of great people I follow who follow me in return and I love talking to them. They tweet great advice, quotes, and lots of funny stuff that makes me laugh. You can't have too much of that. It's great and like they say "laughter is the best medicine", and there is plenty of that to be had in Twitterville!

One other thing I might mention is that so far the one downside to twitter is that just on the rest of the net you can get some bad information. Never take important info you receive in twitterland as fact. Do your research and take the time check the facts. As with the case of the recent H1N1 (swine flu), there was a lot of misinformation flying around out there. But the facts are easily checked on the CDC website (Notice the link I've provided in the sidebar).  So my advice is to check your facts always before sending it on to others. 

Another thing to remember is the most important thing of all. If you don't want someone else to know what your saying, don't put it out there on twitter! It's inevitable it will get out to the very person you didn't want to hear it. Remember, this is out there for the whole world to see and be assured that they WILL see it.  

Now go out there and twitter your hearts out. I highly recommend it. It's so much fun and as I said before, there are a lot of wonderful people out there to tweet with! I have many of them on my list and I love em all! Happy tweeting!!


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