Short, Sharp Bursts

No, I’m not advocating the use of machine gun fire so let’s nip that one in the bud right from the get-go. I am of course, referring to the ADHD kid of social media: Twitter.

I used to be so colourful: writing lengthy blog entries about what I’d been doing, where I’d been on holiday, things that piss me off and so on. I used to update my status on Facebook and look forward to reading friends’ updates and seeing what they’ve been up to in Farmville (OK not the second one). But that’s all gone by the wayside now. Facebook is getting along quite nicely without me, Thank You, and this blog… well, this blog has probably forgotten who its creator is, let’s just leave it at that.

The reason is Twitter. I’m addicted to Twitter. I really like Twitter. Twitter is my friend.

Why?

Well, I — like most people I guess — can be interesting and quite funny at times, but not all of the time. No. Quite a lot of the time I’m being just ordinary, and who wants to read that? That’s the trouble with blogging and bloggers: You know there is a rapier wit in there somewhere but you often have to trawl through pages and pages of “my cat did this” and “what I bought in Oxford St last weekend” in order to find the odd really funny story or joke. And if you yourself are a blogger (like I am, but I only loosely qualify on the grounds that I don’t do any actual blogging much any more) then you have the added chore of having to write regular pearls of wisdom or comedic gems that will have your readers rolling around beside their brushed metal computer desk in fits of laughter. That’s pressure.

 

If only there were some smaller, tighter, more concise way of telling the world how you feel. A way of immediately sharing that joke you just thought of. Nothing more, no pre-amble or detailed description of the circumstances. Just the joke. What if you have a statement you want to make about your view of the world right now but you don’t want to spend half an hour doing it? Well sit back and relax, because Twitter is the answer.

I find it liberating that I have only 140 characters in which to deliver my message whatever it may be. I no longer have to put too much thought into what I want to write, I just have an idea, then tippy tappy it’s gone, out into the Big Wide World. And even better, if you’re stuck for something to say you can read what everyone else is saying and respond to that. It’s like a huge shared firework display of language. BANG! that was nice. Oooohhhh! I liked that one, but now it’s gone and we’re on to the next. Whose rocket will launch next? I’m not sure this analogy is working now; seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

Anyway, I may not be writing much here at the moment (all that will change on January 1 of course), but at least I’ve done you the favour of including my Twitter timeline over on the right-hand column, in this —->> general direction, so even if there are no updates on the blog you can at least see that I’m still alive and talking to people. Probably not to you though.

Too Much

Twitter and Facebook are sapping all my creative juices. And if that’s not bad enough, I now have a Google Wave account too.

I want to write a Google Wave review/first impressions, but what with checking all my messages and sending all my updates I can’t find the time.

It’s Too Hard!

Look, the internet’s moved on. Everyone’s Tweeting and updating their status. You can do that in less than a minute (or in the time it takes you to type 140 characters), so all of a sudden blogging seems like… well… just a bit of a chore.

I’ve got a mountain of stuff I’d like to talk / moan / rant / joke about, but by the time I’ve updated my Facebook status, Tweeted to my followers and commented on all my friends’ photos, it’s, well, time for bed, so this blog’s left out in the cold innit?

Which is a problem, because this blog is my first and only real love. Given total freedom I’d rather just sit here all day dispensing nuggets of wisdom, but I feel under so much pressure to get with the Social Media vibe that I spend most of my time online engaged in the aforementioned activities, which explains why this is the first you’ll have heard from me in about a week.

Ooh! Another FB notification! Bye…

#whatami?

Continuing the theme, these new search strings are leaving me feeling a little left out. Being over 45 years of age I am acutely aware that I’m not at the vanguard of the internet’s evolution any more. I used to be an early adopter of any new internet technology or social meme: I was an early user of Facebook when my kids were lost in the doldrums of Bebo, and I used my credit card online before the early Fraud Demons subsided. But now I seem to treat new memes and developments in Social Media with stick-in-the-mud cynicism. For instance I resisted getting the Twitter bug for as long as I could, dismissing it as a fad for peple too lazy to blog. But I have finally succumbed and I “get it” now.

So, just when I was pulling a muscle trying to pat myself on the back for returning to with-itness along come #thesethings. As I said before, these strings preceded by a hash sign are a recent meme that social networks have picked up, and they’re supposed to help you gather content on a given subject. The idea is this: you put the tag in your blog post, Facebook comments and Tweets, and you instantly get a seat on the gravy train that is a Twitter Trend. I’m convinced some people just pepper their Tweets with #thesethings to look cool.

Oops, there I go again being a miserable old git about it; that way danger lies. I’m starting to sound like a dinosaur and we all know what happened to them!

#thesethings are OK I guess, and I’m doing my best to embrace them, but I continue to have two problems that leave me feeling left out:

1. Am I allowed to start one?

What are the rules? Who can start one? I know I could post a Tweet containing #obesity (just to pick a personal example), but unless others pick it up and start copying it it will quickly look silly all on its own and I’ll feel like the misfit on the bus whose suggestion of Anarchy In The UK brings the sing-song to a silent, glaring halt. No, there must be a sage group of #Elders who consider applications and then decide which get the seal of approval. So I’m safe as long as I just follow trends and don’t try actually starting one.

2. They don’t explain themselves

I always thought the point of a search term was to help you find out about it, yet #thesethings seems to do anything but. Oh yes, they’ll help you find thousands of Tweets talking around this mystery subject, but if you’re not already at the party you’re left peering in through the window, the disco lights dancing on your hopeful face. Let me give you an example:

Sample Tweets returned on searching for #140conf

chatterboxapp @ajleon glad you got a picture of the monkeys while they still were around. Alas they have all found better homes now. #140conf

hellemans RT @marlooz Ok people joke is over, please give me back my laptop… #140conf #missinglaptop

rahulnambiar @maheshmurthy Do use the @cleartrip @kiruba case study at #140conf http://bit.ly/Jmzul

See what I mean? This all started when Twitter listed #140conf as a Twitter Trend, so naturally I searched on it to try and find out what 140conf was about. But what you get is a stream of cliquey allusions all RT-ing and @-ing each other and using those once-useful-but-lately-annoying shortened urls. So now that these Tweeters have had the benefit of being part of the #140conf Club and using bit.ly to keep their Tweets short and sweet, it is apparently now my job to a) backtrack all the RT’s and @’s to get the rest of the thread, b) to visit http://bit.ly/Jmzul to see what the hell he’s talking about, and finally c) go look up 140conf on Google, which last step would have gotten me where I wanted to be in the first place, only quicker.

Damn, slipping back into GOM (Grumpy Old Man) mode again. #bugger