ESPN's Bill Simmons has been fun to follow
Actually, I really want to write something more meaningful, whether it is sports, politics, social, or celebrity issues, or other things making newspaper headlines in the last seven days or so. Unfortunately, it’s been a remarkably quite week. After all the hype created by the election, things have been like the good old days when our great general Soeharto was still in charge. A life in peace and harmony. So I think, it’s just fine to write about something less serious, less demanding from thinking standpoint.
Looking at the title, you’ve guessed it. I’ll talk about my own experience with all this twitter thing. I guess it started like 3 or 4 months ago when Anton introduced me to this micro blogging website after a macroeconomics class. Initially and predictably (like many of my friends), I didn’t like it. I had no interest in it whatsoever. I mean, I had already signed for facebook, and considering all those features provided by the world’s default social networking website, I didn’t think that it would be necessary for me to join another which only has one feature: sharing status messages. And all that I can say is that I’m not a facebook addict either (it’s been working well, but still…); I rarely updated my status, I didn’t have that many friends, I never enjoyed photo-tagging, and playing games wasn’t also something I found so interesting (except the Know-It-All Trivia).
So where were we? Okay, now back to twitter. I didn’t think that I would spend a couple of hours in front of PC for following certain celebrities updates; Cinta Laura: global warming is cool, lol! or Kobe Bryant: just shot a three point or other worthless celebrity updates. No thanks! I had better things to do. Or at least I would think of something else to do to kill the time. But, Anton kept promoting his new craze and asked me to have an account. I signed up eventually. I wouldn’t kill me anyway.
And that was that. I didn’t bother to login to my twitter account for a month or so. I didn’t think I had to. But not so long after that, Bill Simmons came to my life. I like reading his comical sport column on ESPN.com’s Page 2. Gradually, I started to read another articles. Many articles, from SI or ESPN’s sports column to The New Yorkers and New York Times’ political column. In addition, I started to blog again (the last time I wrote an article was like a year ago). Suddenly, I though this tweet thing could work along with my blog, that’s why they call it micro blogging. There are sometimes things that fit to a 700 or 1000-word article. But sometimes, I just needed to share my spontaneous thoughts on certain currents issues. And for the latter, a 140-character status message seemed just right. A 160-character message (like the SMS) would be preferable, but 140 is just fine.
Until now, it still does.
And what’s good about twitter is you don’t have to give up (too much of) your personal information to people. Unlike facebook where you share a certain amount of information like address, phone number, where you work, hobbies, or even your relationship status. In twitter it’s just simply about sharing messages. Not more. It’s true that you share things, but you don’t overshare. Your personal information won’t be exposed to public. And there is no ‘add friend’/'confirm friend’ thing here, you just have to follow. So if you have a twitter account, it means that you want people to know what you’re thinking, experiencing, or doing. They don’t violate your right to have protected privacy because it’s basically you who want to share to people.
Another good thing I have to say is the trending topic. It simply displays the most tweeted word or keyword in a certain period of time. It allows people to know what’s going on. It helped people around the globe know what was happening during the Iranian election this year because when a user logged in, the word ‘Iran’ or ‘Iran election’ would appear in the trending topic. All the sudden many understood how many Iranian felt about their presidential election. Twitter with its 140-character message, surprisingly helps its users get connected with others.
I won’t say I’m a twitter addict. I’m not. And I’m pretty confident to say, I won’t. But this new internet phenom can work and be fun, depending on how you use it. I don’t use it to simply update the latest thing that I do (‘just called my mom’, ‘can’t sleep right now’, ‘feeling cold’, bla bla bla). I won’t do it. Now I share link of an interesting article on my tweet. I bitch about things on it. And as I mentioned earlier, I put it on my blog (hint: see bottom right of this page just in case you missed it). And yeah, of course I promote my blog’s article on my tweet (thanks to URL shortening website), arguably a good way to raise my profile. Well, I eventually realize it’s not that bad. Ton, it’s indeed not that bad (and thanks for sharing). It can work.
I’m not gonna talk how this site raises money (I don’t see any ads, or maybe I missed it). I don’t care (well, actually as a business school student I do, but it takes another 1500-word article to discuss the matter). As for now, I enjoy it, the way it is. But if I were asked for additional or improved features, i just wish the reply feature could be made easier like those in facebook. And as I’m a heavy user of mobile internet, I wish the mobile site could be as functional as the standard desktop site. And for me that would be good enough.
