You see, I'm not talking birds here. I'm talking Twitter, which I honestly never in a million years thought I'd be doing.
I've mentioned this before, but I tweet for work. At work, yes, but literally for work. On our work feed. I also blog for work (under my actual name, even. Fancy that). I refuse to Facebook for work (so far...), but that's only because I refuse to Facebook for anyone.
What I'm saying here is that I spend a lot more time on social media than you might expect, especially for someone who doesn't own a computer. Yes, I still don't own a computer. I get enough computer time here, and since I'm allowed to use the computer for personal things (like, say, this) on my breaks that's usually plenty. Believe it or not, I don't really even miss the computer when I don't have access to one. Erm... well, except that I always have stuff to catch up on (including work stuff) when I do have access again, of course.
Hmm. 'Scuse me. I seem to have lost my intended topic somewhere in that last paragraph.
Oh yeah. Twitter. Funny thing about Twitter. I'm actually finding Twitter... useful, in a work sort of way. Twitter. Useful. Yes, it's about the last two words I'd ever expected to find in the same sentence.
When Twitter started I thought it sounded like the stupidest thing I'd ever heard of. I couldn't figure out what the point of it could possibly be. I mean, if I wanted the general internet population to read something that was on my mind I'd blog, right? What would be the point of blogging a single sentence? And if I wanted to send a short message it probably wouldn't be for everyone anyway, so I'd send a text instead. Twitter didn't seem to add anything to the world that I needed. And when I checked it out, it seemed so mundane. Let's face it -- Twitter's first moments really did seem to be all about telling people what you were having for supper.
Pretty useless.
The interesting thing about Twitter, though, is that it's Twitter's users who've found out what it's good for. It's the users who've moved things away from the realm of boring and useless to almost a collective consciousness (and theeere's where the anthill comes in, if anyone was wondering. I'll leave you to elaborate the metaphor on your own). The users figured out that Twitter could be used for advertising, or as a beacon, or as a call to arms, or even just as simple entertainment. Oddly enough (for me), I've found it sort of fascinating to watch the thing evolve.
And for a small nature centre like us, it's become an important communication tool since things we tweet are often picked up and retweeted by others who reach people that we don't. Another thing I thought I'd never see, there: Twitter and Important coming to mind at the same time.
Anyway. If anyone out there is interested in our Twitter feed or our work blog (although I'm not sure why you would be, since the stuff we publish is generally pretty local), leave me some sort of contact info in the comments and I'll send you the address. The only reason I'm not just adding it here is that I kind of like to keep work-me and deeol-me at least slightly separated.
And if you're wondering if deeol-me has a Twitter account... yes, she does. Just to follow people with. I don't tweet myself, you see.
No one really wants to hear what I had for supper.
I guess that means that some things about Twitter are still useless...
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