I swear the spiritual heavenly reality of instant mind-to-mind communication is rushing full force upon us. It can be overwhelming, but there are ways to lasso the volume and chaos and corral it to something manageable.
If Facebook and MySpace are too dizzzy bizzzy, cumbersome, and prone to crashing my computer for me, then Twitter is a lightweight little text-based humming bird that lets me fly and tweet without strangling me with boat anchors of everybody else’s sponsored c.r.a.p. tied around my neck.
Over the last month or so, I’ve been becoming more familiar with Twitter’s harmless-looking little web site, and at first you think what damage can be done in 140 characters, but whoa, do people’s personalities come out! And it’s quite addictive! You can even take it with you everywhere you go by piping it into your cell phone. If there’s no other reason I’d want a smart phone, that’s it. Besides keeping your friends and family in your pocket within a second’s reach (and apparently, Twitterers were a first source of news in the Mumbai attack), the really great thing about it is you get to rub elbows with anybody, and I mean ANYBODY. To explain it, Twitter is a method of sending text messages to large groups of people at once, and receiving text messages from anybody you choose to subscribe to. There is usually some overlap between subscribers and subscribees, but it doesn’t have to be 100%. There is some equalization because you can reply to tweets you’ve received, even if the tweeter is not a subscriber to you.
It’s incredible the fascinating people I’m getting to know. Some are famous, and some aren’t, but probably the coolest are the Pope, @PopeBenedictXVI, and some ~m~u~m~b~l~e~ er big name marketers and inspirational speakers. (OK, I admit, the Pope is using an American aid, but he’s good at it.) @BarackObama used to do Twitter, but, heh heh heh, the day after the election, the Secret Service Cone of Silence descended upon him and they confiscated the two rectangles in his pocket – his Blackberry and his cigarette pack. New presidents must sign off all electronic communication, first e-mail, and now Twitter, lest somebody archive it. (Used to be just the Nixon tapes we worried about.) Apparently presidents must also get all their news from designated CIA advisers, too. Ok, the Secret Service didn’t really take his cigarette pack, but it seems there’s no smoking in those government buildings’ conference rooms anyway. It’s funny but sad, Ol’ Barack has picked up 20,000 new Twitter followers since the election, and every one of them will be disappointed for 4-8 years.
“Somebody” else cool to follow is the Phoenix Mars rover @MarsPhoenix. The machine itself has gone to permanent sleep in the Martian winter, but the scientists are still tweeting with the science they’ll be doing for years to come with the data they’ve collected.
So please join the big party in the sky with me! Please follow me at @SuzCorner.
