highfireDANGER!

incendiary wit from a perpetually curious techfemme... and the crap I find on the interwebs.

I love Twitter... But where are my friends?

First, what the heck am I talking about?
WTF is Twitter?
Twitter is a social site in a micro-blog format.
You post updates that are limited to 140 characters.
They're are called tweets (cute, right?);
people follow you and track your updates in real-time.
It can be strangers, friends, whomever.
You can block people from following you if you're not comfortable with strangers,
overall Twitter has loose security settings, but perhaps that will change.
You can also reply to one another's tweets using the @ symbol.
Again, this is all in real time.

What's interesting that only five of my friends under 25 Twitter,
they're only some of the other iggli bloggers, and I had to basically force them,
and only two really update regularly.
(Some Twitterers I know are under 25, but they don't count
because they are in the Web 2.0 biz, and are automatically obsessed
with most mediums.  I consider them outside of the realm of, like myself,
"people that make sense" and "people that normal".  Moving on).

When I ask those who are my age about Twitter,
(Gen-Y, or the Millenials)
there is much face-scrunching
and nose up-turning
and cries of "it seems stupid"
and "I just don't *get* it."
Hmm... maybe I don't get it either.
I can't describe exactly why I love it,
but I can't get enough of this medium.

What's the appeal?
Well, first, a disclaimer:
I would guess it's only fun if you have unlimited data/texting.
I blew through 3,600 text messages this month!
Luckily, it didn't mean a thing.

So, what makes Twitter so great for me?
How can I get you to, perhaps, *get* it?
Perhaps, it's several things:

a) Twitter is *alive*.
It's as real-time as you get.
You are privy to taking part in people's lives in 140 character increments.
It's shocking to read the amount of wit and wisdom your fellow humans can pack into tiny sentences.  It makes me love people more, and this is a good thing.
b) Twitter gives me access to people I wouldn't generally get to correspond with otherwise.
Everyone understands that this is as public as it gets.  There is definitely a degree of consent, so I don't feel so bad following people I don't know, people that I wouldn't get contact with otherwise. 
c) Twitter lets other people have access to me!
I enjoy being a public person, and generally people care about you more than you think.  For example, try to not think it's nice when people know you had a headache the night before and they are nice enough to ask you the next day if you feel better.  Try to hate that and pretend that doesn't make your life better.  Yep, I see impending failure.
d) You are what you say.
You don't get much space to have stupid profile information.  You get space for a few sentences, max.  Say stuff, and that makes you.  Also, there is room for one photo of you.  It's not as much of a gratuitous skin fest, like myspace or facebook.  Yeah, you can link to those, but generally I would think people read about you first.
e) I love the challenge of a new medium.
People have accused microblogging as being an inadequate way of expressing themselves, somehow cheapening their expressions.  I've got a one word rebuttal for that and it's *haiku*.

If you'd like to give this a try,
and start with a lively, funny person, go to twitter.com/hotdogsladies.
You won't be disappointed.
Next, come follow me: twitter.com/highfiredanger.
I'm funny, also.
And follow iggli at twitter.com/iggli.

Yes, EXACTLY RIGHT (@ SXSW tweets)

Thank you, twitter.com/hotdogsladies!