68/366 – Feather Head

4

March 8, 2012 – Nothing exciting today, just a feather from one of the cat toys. But it also has a silly significance. I caved again. I’m back on Twitter. Not because I want to be, but because a group I joined uses it.

I originally set up a Twitter account out of curiosity.

Then I promptly deleted it.

Then I reopened it because a few people were using it and I wanted to understand why. I didn’t get why anyone would want to be involved in reducing human communication to 140 characters that included some relatively meaningless hashtags that only served to try and self-promote.

So I deleted it again.

Then I joined a photography group and the only mechanism for posting was via Twitter. So I opened it up again and just did my daly postings. Then the group folded so i no longer had a use for it.

So I deleted it again.

Then, last week, I joined a new group and again Twitter became mandatory. So I reopened my account again. I set up automatic posting from my blog and thought I’d be done with it. But then I did something I hadn’t done before. I clicked “follow” for a Twitter account that represents a group of motorcyclists interested in rallying for more affordable parking in Vancouver. And then, because I did that, I saw a post relating to it, and commented on that post, and then that person followed me, and so did the original group. So now I’ve gone from not wanting anything to do with Twitter to actually posting on it, to following, to having a couple of people follow me. This is all very strange and unusual territory.

I still think Twitter does a disservice to language and proper communication, but I guess I’m back, at least for the moment, but predominantly as a mechanism for posting to a group. Who knows, maybe someone will give me a valid reason to stay this time. Facebook is still my first choice for networking, but we’ll see.

(To be fair, I do actually have  a second Twitter account, but it’s under a volunteer group and I have it integrated with both Facebook and our website, both of which I manage. Facebook is great in that I can make an informational post on Facebook and have it automatically sent to Twitter and the website. So no need to post in three places, just one, and it meets the needs of the people who use different information sources all at once.)