Time to Twitter

Twitter this, twitter that. Everyone is twittering these days, it seems. I turn on the news and another civilian is out there, twittering to their hearts content, screaming at me that it's the new, new thing and if I'm not twittering then I'm a nobody. "Blogging is, like, soooo 2008 Darling".

Well, I guess that means its time to twitter.

But how to twitter?

I signed up a few weeks ago but to be honest I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do next. I registered my phone and waited for something to happen, but nothing happened. I didn't know what to "tweet" and I didn't actually know how to "tweet". So, I left it and got on with my life.

The troubling thing was that I kept getting emails saying "So and so is now following you on Twitter". Spooky. I would spin round in my chair to catch them but no-one was there. I could sense them "following" me though, even though I hadn't twatted. Twyped? Twanged?

Finally, this evening I decided that if people were going to follow me on twitter I had at least better figure out how to use the damn thing. Once I had got that bit sorted (easier than I thought - give it a go), I had to decide what to say.

Some people seem to twitter almost minute by minute on what they are doing. Others share deep, profound thoughts, several times a day. I was at dinner with a chap who has over 20,000 followers (does that make him a religion?). He tweets constantly about practially everything he is doing. Yes, everything!

A lot of people feed their stream of tweets into their facebook updates. I'm not sure about that. If you are on the receiving end, then it feels like one of your friends just talks and talks continuously and no-one else can get a word in edgeways. It's one thing to actively choose to follow someone on twitter, it's a bit different if someone keeps sticking their head through your living room window or popping up behind you on the bus and shouting "Hi there, I'm just washing my goose" (actually that would be intriguing, but you get what I mean). So, I won't be doing that. If you are my facebook friend, you get to see my occasional, quite personal facebook updates. If you follow me on twitter, you see something else.

I notice that some folk have given up blogging and switched to twittering instead. I wonder. I think blogging and twittering are different things. They feel different to me. On the blog I can talk, share, rant, waffle, paint. I feel the need to do something different with twitter.

"I feel". That's important. I'll use twitter to express feelings rather than facts. I'll tweet about what's going on at a point in time, wherever I am, but rather than saying "I am doing...." I will say "I am feeling..." and if you follow you can decide for yourself what I might or might not be doing. Sometimes you'll be able to tell from that days blog post, but I won't work too hard to tie them together.

So, I'm going to express feelings in my tweets. But in what form? I think I will go.........hmmm.....errr...ahhhh, got it ! I'll go all Haiku on you. I will base all my twittering purely on how I feel and I will express it in the form of badly written haiku poems.

That should drive those pesky followers away :)