Twitter (this is not a tweet)

I joined Twitter. I don't understand it. At the top of the screen it says, "What are you doing?" Underneath you are supposed to put, in 140 characters or less, what you are doing. My problem: Every time I read the question I am on Twitter so the answer is "I am on Twitter". So I have to think about what I was just doing, or will be doing. My problem: Sometimes I actually go and do what I said I was going to do, and sometimes I suffer from topic drift and do something completely different. (For anyone who read my twitters I did get a new car tyre, I did not go and cook the steak).

And then there's the "following" bit. You can follow other peoples twitters. People you don't even know. I discovered that Martha Stewart is on Twitter. I read her tweets. I couldn't understand why thousands of people are following Martha Stewart's tweets. They go pretty much like, "I'm going to go do some gardening." "Watch my show tomorrow." "I'm going to do some gardening." "Tomorrow's show will be really exciting". "I'm going to do some gardening."

Then I realised then when Martha's (first name basis already) tweets appear on some-one's Twitter they show up in the midst of everyone elses and they look like little snips from a friend - "oh, Martha just told me she's going to do some gardening." I thought I might follow the 10 Downing Street tweets. Maybe some-one in the Prime Ministers office would have an unguarded moment and say what they really think of the German Chancellor or the Pope. But it's very cautious stuff. "Now we are driving to the summit meeting." "Now we are getting out of the car.". "It's windy out of the car". "Now we're going up in an elevator." (I may have that last one confused with Oprah).

I like reading tweets from people I know, and maybe some people I'd like to get to know a bit more. Can you get to know people more on Twitter? I just read Physical Presence Matters on Anette Ejsing's blog. She wrote:

"We love hanging out with other people. And when other people do not want to hang out with us, we hang out with them anyway. Or, rather, we hang on to their faces online. On Facebook, for instance. Because that’s where their faces are on display all the time."

I'm not sure if I completely agree with the rest of her post, but it made me think. I value the friendships I've made online. Some of us have been friends for years now. Twitter can be a bit of a laugh, a quick catch up on how some-one is. People I already know something about. But I do find it difficult trying to summarise myself in 140 characters or less. Hence the blog post. I'm going to cook the steak now...