As I fell asleep last night, a thought began to coalesce which accurately summed up what I’ve learned so far from being on Twitter. About a half hour later I woke up in a daze and wrote down that thought, hoping to expand on it at some point today. Of course, when I looked at that note this morning it was apparent that my moment of clarity was anything but (hence the title of today’s post – 2 points to anyone who gets the reference):

Fortunately, with a little caffeine and some online radio tunes, I’m able to recover some of the highlights. The early-adopt / early-abandon method was definitely taken by a LOT of people, as evidenced by several accounts that only 1 or 2 posts in the first couple of days since joining. There’s a strong, active community of people (celebs and non-celebs alike) that post no less than a half a dozen random thoughts per day. And then there are some that post one or two well-crafted thoughts with attached links whenever the mood strikes. Of course, there’s a healthy number of hybrid Twitterers (Tweeters? – forgive me, I still haven’t really absorbed the clique-lingo) that fill out the scatterplot as well, of which I consider myself to be one of.

From what I gather, people haven’t come to a consensus about exactly WHAT Twitter is. To some it’s a blog, to others it’s a megaphone, and still yet to others it’s like some sort of lasso, used to corral the random thoughts of others for later processing. As I posted some time ago, it’s not unique, but I suppose all that matters is that it’s still standing.

Some other random highlights:

Brent Spiner – Still amusing, still weird, still strangely compelling to read.
Alan Cross – Yet another channel to follow one of radio’s most knowledgeable and entertaining personalities.
@EverySpam/PornBot that has ever added me to their list – Perpetual proof that there will always be a mechanism out there to add noise to balance out the signal.

I’ll keep this (kinda) short, because I expect that among the people reading this, there will be some who know me, and some who don’t. Of course, that expectation presupposes that a lot of you actually read this blog. Hah. We’ll see I guess. Oh, and for those of you that don’t know me, don’t get scared off by the title of this blog. I’m not trying to sell you anything.

I signed up for Twitter a few years ago when a friend (@joanna) introduced me to it. I hadn’t used it since. I’ve posted quite a bit about it in the past, but I’ve never actually used it.

As time went by, I heard about more and more people hopping on, but I never took to it. I just didn’t get it. In fact, I still don’t. As far as the communication angle is concerned, I’m already waist deep in instant messengers, websites, message boards, text messages and a cellphone. So why am I here/there then?

Well, I’ve noticed that like with many mechanisms of communication, people use Twitter in very different ways. Some people are letting the world know about their breakfasts, some are self-promoting, some are staying in relatively close circles of communication, and some people are actually engaging in conversations with, well, just about everyone. This is something I didn’t expect, and in retrospect it should have been obvious.

One look at the list of people that I’m following, and your next question is probably…”WTF?” Well, there’s no semblance of order there, really. In addition to the few people that I know, I just started going through the lists of people that were following others, and adding names that I recognized. I will admit that I was rather surprised when I was notified via email that “Richard Moll is following you on Twitter!” Now, this is likely due to the fact that some people return the favour of a follow-action in order to expand their own networks. But hey, I thought it was kinda neat regardless. Thanks Richard!

So I guess I’m here to [attempt to] join the conversation. I’ll be blogging (here) about some of the things that I really can’t cram into 140-characters, but I’ll also be in and amongst some of you, trying to be somewhat entertaining, but mainly trying to figure this whole Twitter thing out.

Cheers!

Here are some quick points to ponder that have me wondering about… well, just about everything.

1) According to Nielsen, The Weather Network was the 4th most accessed site (in Canada) on mobile phones in Q1/2009. They beat out Yahoo Mail, Gmail, iTunes, Google Maps, MSN Games, and YouTube. Windows LiveMail, Google Search and Facebook took the top 3 spots.

Think about this. 674,000 people were in a position where they needed to access information that is questionably accurate at the best of times. Further, it’s winter in Canada (Q1 2009). You do not need a network of trained meteorologists to tell you that it’s going to be COLD.

2) I’ve decided to use the Twitter account that I had abandoned 3 seconds after signing up for it upon its birth, to actually, genuinely see what the fuss is all about. I don’t know if I plan on updating it. I want to see if I can establish a really ecclectic list of people to follow for starters. My first reaction? Following Brent Spiner is equal parts amazing, creepy, and disturbingly addictive. I’d definitely suggest checking out his feed.

“ALARM! ALARM! Someone has breached the security system! “Ernst, Ernst, to me! (learned that from Picard) STAT! (learned that from ER)”

3) The same could be said about any specialized industry, but I’ve always found the task of describing what I do to be a difficult task, especially when the person asking isn’t in the industry (specifically if said person is older and happens to be in my family). I usually start off explaining a particular project, stepping back to mention that it’s in the Digital Marketing space, stepping back once more to mention that it’s just marketing with a particular technology spin to it, and finally I resort to grunting “I do computers.” This is usually met with a lightbulb reaction and a remark similar to “Ah yes. My friend/your cousin Jane is a programmer too!” It’s usually at that point that my soul dies a little and I start fantasizing about violently dramatic ways to escape the conversation and/or the room.