Joining the world of Twitter (and other social media)

I blog (as you're obviously aware if you're reading this). I have facebook - where I periodically place photos, status updates, and links to this blog. And I've finally joined twitter, but do I really need it? After all, I even have the academic version of Facebook (no, not linkedin, but academia.edu - recommended, by the way, for all of those who occasionally read scholarly articles, irrelevant of what field you're in).

And twitter, what is twitter? In 140 characters or less (the number of characters includes spaces, although links are shortened), you try to write something informative or interesting. Ideally, you also include a #tagline, so that people searching for the topic might come across it (e.g., #twitterisdumb or, closer to home, #oudezijds100). And then you post it, and it becomes in theory public to everyone, although really only your followers will likely read it (and even then not necessarily). If you crosspost to Facebook, the average person increases their readership (since most people I know have many more friends on Facebook than followers on twitter - although, like twitter, not all friends read all your posts).

I think my problem is that I'm not entirely sure what the point of twitter is. It sometimes feels like it's a popularity contest (and I try to avoid those ever since failing miserably at it in high school).Or a contest to be the wittiest. But I've realized that unless you're koninginBeatrix (fictive) or posting Calvin & Hobbes quotes, (both of which I recommend following) you're probably not going to win, unless you're famous (and by definition already popular).

I've now been doing this twitter thing for a few months, and I'm still not sure of it. I do like the chance to "tweet" in Dutch - and it has allowed me to connect (if one can call tweeting someone connecting?!? it's much less personal than writing a mail and even less personal than writing on someone's Facebook wall) with others concerned with prostitution issues. So it's not entirely a loss. However, it doesn't entirely fit me now, so I'll gladly spend my energy on other social media (the usefulness of which can be questioned on another day).

But as I did find a good article about how how pastors/churches can use twitter, I'll pass that on here:"10 tweets to impact your church." The best part of social media, after all, is being able to pass things on and share :)