Twitter

Random Thoughts #1

/ jimmyrhythm / Leave a comment

Yes, it’s been a while since my last post; I’m sure you all have missed me terribly. Truth is, I’ve been fighting a severe case of Procrastination lately, and have only recently felt recovered enough to attempt to string a few words together into a coherent sentence.

I’m still feeling too weak to attempt an entire post on one subject, so instead I’ll throw out a few disconnected Random Thoughts:

• Only three more new episodes of Lost this season. Then I guess that’s it until, what – January? Thank goodness I’ll have summer and Christmas to distract me while I wait. One thing I’m not looking forward to during the Final Season is the amount of spoilers that will no doubt be floating around. Why can’t folks just enjoy the story as it unfolds?

• I’m seriously considering getting an iPhone when the new ones hit the market this summer. Burning questions: What do I do with my 16GB iTouch? Use the phone strictly as a phone and the iTouch as my .mp3 player? eBay the iTouch? What about all apps I’ve purchased? Can I move them to the phone, or will I have to repurchase?

• I need to do some unfollowing in Twitter. I’m sensing some Superior Attitudege by some Tweeters towards those of us who are using this social media to be…well, sociable. Some seem to think that Twitter should be used exclusively for entrepreneurial networking and selling, I don’t know…stuff. Unless you’re a Social Media Guru or Maven or Whatever, you need not apply. Like every enjoyable activity since kids first starting tossing pie tins back and forth, the money people are looking to make a quick buck on folks having fun. The new buzzword is “Monetize”.

• I started using MySpace, Facebook and Twitter before all of my friends. I guess I could promote myself as a Social Media Pioneer.

• Heh…those last two Thoughts may lose me enough followers that I won’t have to wade through my list looking for cutoffs.

• I am still of the belief that Bluetooth headsets should never be utilized outside of one’s vehicle. If you’re walking around Wal Mart wearing one, people are not looking at you thinking, “There goes someone obviously very important, and leading the pack in cutting-edge technology.”  They’re thinking, “What a douche.” Particularly if you’re walking around with your phone in your hand.

• I’m participating in a weight loss challenge at the MMA school I train at. I’m not leading, but I’m close. I really want a couple of tacos, or a Five Guys burger.

• Speaking of douches, I’m hoping Coach Dragon Slayer gets blindsided sooner than later. Preferably by someone he despises. I don’t care how much Jeff likes him (gotta love Jeff’s blogs, though).

That’ll have to do it for now; I feel another attack of Procrastination coming on. I have to go be apathetic for a while.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

I Will Follow You, Will You Follow Me

/ jimmyrhythm / Leave a comment

Do you tweet?

President Obama does, as do the Governator and Britney. Or at least, people on their staffs do in their name.

But Stephen Fry, Tina Fey, John Cleese, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Yoko Ono, Lance Armstrong, and Seth MacFarlane do their own tweeting, for better or worse.

Tweeting is, of course, what you do with Twitter, which asks one simple question: “What are you doing?” The answer must contain 140 characters or less.

As you can see, I’m caught up in this foolishness as well, although I can’t for the life of me tell you why. I started by innocently answering the basic question . “Getting ready to leave for work,” I’d tweet, or “Calling it a night.”

That got boring pretty quickly, so I began throwing out some allegedly amusing one-liners, Zen observations, or obscure quotations (like “Admiration is for poets and dairy cows”; I was watching Twin Peaks one night whilst tweeting).

Now I’m a full-fledged Twitterholic, armed with TweetDeck, Hoot Suite, Tweetie and God knows what else, prepared to rt or DM or @ or just tell you what I’m having for lunch at a moment’s notice. As long as there’s an Internet connection.

One thing I don’t get caught up in (or understand) is the whole “following” frenzy. I think I may be following about 47 Twits (none of whom I actually know) and being followed by about the same. I keep getting tweets shouting, “get 50,000 followers in 30 days!” Why would I want that? They’d just want me to be one of their faux-followers in return. It’s tough enough to get through the tweets I get now.

And I’ve been followed by people I’ve never heard of. When I check their profiles, they describe themselves as “social media entrepreneurs”, which means they’re looking for a way to get my money.

Personally, I think the whole “following” thing is a cousin to the MySpace “see how many friends you can amass” deal (back when MySpace was relevent). It means nothing.

I’d love to ramble on about this (is there a literary equivilent of a jam band?), but one of my programs just beeped. I think my close personal friend Stephen Fry has sent me a message. Me and 203,000 other of his close personal friends.