Sunday, September 13, 2009

Twitter: Haiku for the Masses

The world is all a-twitter these days, with Twitter rivaling Facebook for popularity. The difference, of course, is that Twitter exists for more than just social networking. It exists for news, product promotion, conversation, political campaigning and candidate updates, and (unfortunately) spam. One may easily keep track of certain social trends on Twitter since the service is mobile in nature, with most users using using cell phones--Blackberries or iPhones--as the platform interface. Demographically, use is skewed toward those under thirty, although, as with Facebook, those over thirty can be seen pounding their thumbs in public on miniature keypads. Boomers ushered in the computer revolution, and they are doing an admirable job at keeping up with new permutations of technology.

Twitter was started in 2006 by Jack Dorsey as an SMS, or short message service, that allowed only 140 characters per message. It is rated as one of the top 50 websites by Alexa's Web Traffic Analysis.

But what can we really say in 140 characters, which translates into one or twp brief sentences? Not much. Marketing firms love the service because they can send messages, called "tweets," such as "Drink Slush Cola, regular or diet." But who wants to receive ads in a world inundated with commercials that we already try to avoid like the plague. Authors now use Twitter to keep fans apprised of their book signing schedule or work on the latest chapter of their new book. For the life of me, I can't imagine anyone who would want to receive the message "Cat in Philly Tuesday at B&N and starting ch. 33."

Many messages are idle chatter:

Going home now.

Tell the Spunker and the Moocher it didn't work.

Kiki got dumped. Men r bad.

Damn this socialism!

At their worst, tweets are bits of cyber graffiti that, thankfully, most of us of are not exposed to. At its best, tweets are similar to haiku, a few lines of beauty that might brighten someone's day if only for a few seconds even if the brief message doesn't confrom to meter or poetic form..

Consider:

Saw a girl in the subway. Such lovely red hair.

So thirsty. Water fountain in lobby on Broadway.

Sun brutal. Need soda and umbrella. Love, Neil.

As with all aspects of computers and the Internet, cyber technology is what we make of it. Cat's tip for the day: whatever you do, in word or text, think first. Make every word count. Life goes by quickly.

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