Follow-up: I Twitter, Therefore I am not a Twit but a Savvy Chick!

My initial foray into the world of Twitter or "twittering" was started with some degree of trepidation and confusion about this popular medium of social digital communication. I had reservations because it simply did not strike me as an effective way to hold quick chats; something, I believed, instant messaging was purported to do quite well for the attention-span-of-a-gnat crowd.

What was the method to this madness of sending out seemingly random thoughts? What compelled total strangers to share the inane contents of the short-circuits popping off their brains? Why was "everyone" catching the wave of dispensing with much flourish, their @whatever twitter handles at the drop of a hat with the exhortation - " tweet me?"
I was curious and wanted logical not pat answers to my questions. So I signed up anyway because some of my friends, people I love and respect, were on it, loving it, and regaling me with stories about how some elusive marketing/business/creative/ridiculously successful whiz had just responded to their tweets and was now a follower and vise versa.

What the heck I figured, at least, I should give it a test drive before writing it all off as some trendy, juvenile shit! If you read part 1 of this blog, you know what happened, right? I signed up, logged on, and selected a small group of 23 personal/professional connections from my email contact list I could follow instantly. No one was following me but no worries, I sent a quick tweet to them to reconnect - a few did... and then some new pretty impressive people connected with me. Cool!
It was at this point that I decided to suspend my judgement and take a closer look, perhaps because I was so eager to "get it", and that was when I started to see the genius of twitter unfold.
Oh sure, there are some digital stalkers on Twitter who periodically get blocked for "strange behavior or activity," however, the majority of twitterers are hardworking, focused people who use the medium daily to share valuable, hot topic, life enriching/life saving messages.
During his campaign, President Obama used it to regularly update voters on the progression of his historic race. Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter, is on it giving his dose of tweets and inside scopes on himself and the company.
Recently, I read an article by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, speaking about the tremendous value Twitter brings to his business. More apropos was his story, shared in the link above, of being stuck on a hotel balcony in Mexico for 45 minutes and using his cellphone to get help as well as tweet his story, in real-time, on Twitter.
Sometime ago, the notion of sending a 140 character, micro-blog, instant message, with pithy pronouncements of grave or no importance over the Internet, in real-time, seemed trite to me... but, in reality, it isn't trite! Twitter gives us the space/place to answer the question; "What are you doing?" succinctly, sincerely and openly. You can tweet instead of making some of those long-winded phone calls and still be on point. What's not to love?
If you have any doubts about the future of Twitter, or how it is used to get the message out on a variety of issues including good causes, listen to what Evan Williams has to say on this video piece talk at TED and he should know...
Me? I'm in.... tweet me will ya?
@elizobihfrank

Until Next Time...
Ask. Believe. Receive. ©
Elizabeth Obih-Frank