I joined the twiterati today. After years of sitting on the fence and wondering if I should dive in, I decided to take the plunge. I have three reasons for doing this.
First, during the election on Tuesday, I followed various twitter feeds online. I got the various state and election calls five to ten minutes before the bloviating TV newscaster got around to announcing the same result. I would run in from the computer room and announce to Anne what had just occurred and then she would she the same announcement on TV. I think that after a while, she rightly found my behavior somewhat annoying. So much the better, if you ask me. While, I would not have had to join twitter to continue to do this in the future, it did influence my decision.
Second, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, I heard news reports of people being able to get local and detailed accounts of damage at various locales. In the event that a similar widespread disaster occurs either here or in the vicinity of a love one, it might be nice to get that same detailed level of information.
The Wine Dark Sea of Gitche Gumee #Chardonnay
Finally, there is the undeniable element of self promotion. This week, I read the Julia Thomas NYT Magazine article, #InPraiseOfTheHashtag. In her article, she refers to the pound sign as that hungry octothorpe and goes on to liken it to the chorus of a song, its refrain. I look at it as another art form, a 140 character art form. Thomas likens it to poetry, I’ll just shoot for good one liners, checkout @RegenAxe.