Twitterism: What are you doing?

“One could change the world with one hundred and forty characters.” – Jack (Founding Member of Twitter)

I’m not really sure if one can do that but what one can certainly do is let the world know in one hundred and forty characters that world needs a change – All thanks to Twitter!

Twitter’s popularity is gaining impetus of late. Twitter has become one of the most used micro-blogging platform, where in it allows users to interact with friends and strangers called followers (who for some odd reason are very interested in your life). Answer a simple question “what are you doing?” in 140 characters or fewer (Spaces and punctuation marks count too in life!) and have your loyal followers reading your published snippets of conversations and observations.

Every day I read/hear something or the other about Twitter in the newspaper or on TV. With famous people adopting twitter, there is no choice but to speak about it. Special credit goes to the celebrity endorsers like Ashton Kutcher and Oprah for having taken Twitter to the middle of the road. The witty and funny Tweets posted by them have gotten them millions of followers who religiously read every single one of them.

I’d been avoiding it for quite some time now thinking it is just another way of draining time. But after spending almost a day on it and checking out what people typically tweet, I must say it’s unique in its own way. The people who make a regular life’s humdrum details very exciting garner a large audience. The utterance of these details by other people is not the part that fascinated me but the fact that there is phenomenal flow of information and that too real-time.

It was not easy to figure out what’s going on. The little that I figured out of it was that Twitter is what you want it to be. If you look at it as a tool for entertainment- It can be that . If you look at it as a news source- It can be that. If you look at it as a Business/Marketing tool- It can be that. If you look at it as a place to learn- It can be that as well. We have a choice whom to follow and what information to gather. It is simply Staggering!

At the same time what I feel about this new medium of expression is that

# Everyone need not know “What are you doing?” at every second of your life.

# It can drive one crazy. It is nonstop. It is place where everybody 'replies all.'

#The character limit makes one abbreviate. For understanding more on dangers of that Read This ASAP!

# Whether you are a worthy member of Twitter is known by the number of people following you, it’s pretty silly.

#There needs to be a filter between the tweets one is interested to read and the ones shouting an upset stomach!

As with any tool, you have to determine what you want to get out of twitter, and then use it appropriately. It is influential, useful, addictive and very captivating but in the end it’s just another way to dissipate time on Internet.