Twitter In Real Life

 

Watch this video done by College Humor.

Have you ever thought about what your tweets would sound like if you said them on campus? In the classroom? How awkward would that be? Or would it? Too often we forget that our tweets are out there for the entire world to see. If you’re just passing along a message “Krispy Kreme donut sales on Sproul this week!”, you want that. But if you’re replying to someone, having a conversation, people can see that too. It’s like Facebook’s wall-to-wall feature but I don’t have to be your friend to view it. Have you checked out someone’s conversation online just because it was interesting? I’ll admit to doing that. I get curious sometimes. But I know I’ve never stopped to think about people viewing my conversations. Funny thing, I’m not quite sure if I care either.

Thoughts on Twitter

 I’ve been using Twitter for about 1 1/2 months now. I’ve had my account since November, but only really started using it in January. I was really active during one particular weekend in which I gained 100+ followers, then I lost momentum, felt I wasn’t really doing anything with Twitter, and stopped using it until last week’s class session.

I’ve always wondered where there were so few college students on Twitter. Mostly I see journalists, tech people, marketers, writers, a bunch of really smart people using Twitter to change the world essentially. Made me feel pretty small. It made me think–why am I using Twitter? How is that connected to why college kids don’t use Twitter? Well, Twitter lacks the “ooh ahh shiny” appeal of Facebook with its photo/video uploading, its endless amount of applications.. so perhaps thats why. I’ll admit there’s an addiction curve to Twitter. I have yet to meet someone whose first response to Twitter ISNT “ok so I just write about what I’m doing right now? thats… cool”. And then you try to explain to them all the cool stuff you can do with it–like retweets, hashtags, but they’re not listening, they’re still in the “whaat” stage–Twitter’s something you have to try out for yourself. I think the best reason to use Twitter comes from Scott Stratten in Toronto (@unmarketing): “It’s open-door social networking. I don’t need permission to learn from people.”

I think thats probably why I’m on Twitter so much–for the people, for the breadth of knowledge and ideas I get from them. For the willing audience that I get to bounce my ideas off of. For the connections that you never know when will come in handy. For the laughs. For the love (cheesy as it is–you can develop a very warm/supporting following if you remember to give more than you receive)

Tweet Tweet

Follow me on Twitter.

No idea what Twitter is? Read this.

Not convinced why you should join Twitter? I wasn’t either. But I checked it out, followed some people, attracted some followers. The most telling experience I had was this afternoon.

We have Comcast high speed internet. It worked great last semester , but my flatmates and I went home for winter break and came back this weekend. After a flawless semester, our connection dropped not once, but twice, in the last three days, both for intervals of thirty minutes or more. Obviously, I wasn’t too pleased. I want something to work the way it should.

I tweeted it on Twitter “comcast dsl has failed twice in the last 3 days. look, forget about extraordinary service, how about just some consistency pls”, more just to vent than anything else. Within minutes, Comcast got in touch with me through their Twitter representative, ComcastBill, and offered to help. Needless to say, I was very impressed. Comcast hasn’t had the most impressive track record in customer service (Comcast sleeping – Youtube).

Even though I still don’t know what the cause of these problems is, possibly the router, Comcast’s willingness to help has turned itself around in my book.

Got Comcast problems? Follow ComcastBill on Twitter.