Twitter

Before I was "required" to sign up for a Twitter account for class, I had actually already Twitter account mgtoay77 and had been spending a lot of time getting used to tweeting and what have you that actually goes on in Twitter.  In essence it is really just a short and concise form of blogging.  I'm not going to lie...it was never one of those things I yearned to do in life.  Actually, to be completely honest, I have been quite satisfied with Facebook and e-mail up until this particular semester in my life.  Sometimes, I feel discombobulated by all of the updates with my friends lives and getting the 4-1-1 on everyone's situations all of the time. 


I can't help but to find in a time where people complain about violation and lack of privacy in the world today, that we make such an effort in letting the whole world know what we do, when we do it, and at the exact time we are going to do it.  To be frank, there are just some things the world does not need to know about you...or anyone else for that matter.  Why not make some things private?  Keep some thoughts to ourselves?  Learn the decency of keeping a secret or holding one's tongue? 


I know to some of you who are reading this now, you are thinking...wow, is she a hypocrite or what?  She has a Twitter account, a Facebook account; she e-mails and now she is blogging too...how is this not contradicting everything she is saying?  To be honest, yes, it is a contradiction...but only to a certain extent.  I use Twitter, but not in the same ways people use it now...or rather, people my age.  People my age use Twitter to post every emotion, attachment, detachment, crazy idea, dumb quote or song lyric, overused phrase or slang, or what have you every second of the day.  I have received updates from friends five times within a ten minute span...excessive?  Yes, I would say so.  This is what I mean by over sharing...if I wanted a play by play of how your experience in the bathroom with the latest Cosmo was going, I would have asked...need I say more?


I guess what I am trying to say is that I appreciate social networking for social networking's sake, but there is this idea that seems to be looming above all of it.  We share because we have the ability to, and because we have access at our fingertips,  But is it really necessary?  I tweet on random occasions and on sporadic topics; sometimes what I say has no relevance but to one individual and sometimes I will say it to my general audience, but I will never become addicted to this particular social media in the same way I have witnessed others.

I  was lucky enough to find a couple of good professional "tweeters" in the Public Relations field to follow, including those willing to list available jobs.  One, whom I particularly like is Rob Skinner at Skout PR in Manchester, UK.  He is always giving advice as well as website updates that may come in handy when looking for jobs or information in his particular market.  I found this to be extremely intriguing.  The idea of using a social network to post job listings with words spelled  "gr8" and "kol".  I don't know how I feel about the idea of employers posting jobs on Twitter with words spelled like this.  Does that mean that as a future employee I can spell things like this simply out of the inconvenience of number of characters available to the one tweeting? 

Twitter can be either a learning tool or it can way in which we socially navigate the world, or both if you let it.  If you choose to go that route, however, you will need a lot of filtering on what is and is not appropriate for such a Twitter account.