In spring 2008 I signed up for Twitter, wrote exactly 2 tweets while wondering what the whole point of this was and why anyone would care and isn’t this all just a waste of time… So I just abandoned it altogether again. A year later, requests kept coming in from friends that they wanted to follow me on twitter and in the spur of the moment I decided to re-visit the twitter idea.
Since then I’ve realized several things:
- A few of my old friends from Germany are twittering pretty much daily. Apparently it’s more popular with the mid-30s crowd in Germany than the young crowd. Is that the same in the US? Anyway, it’s been a fantastic way to reconnect – and I even coaxed a few into joining facebook – while one of them lured me into StayFriends.de, which keeps wanting me to pay for their service. What – social networks that cost money?
- None of the people who asked to follow me actually twitter themselves. Hah! Apparently most people that sign up for twitter only use it once or twice before abandoning it again. I wonder what the statistics are of people rejoining a year later… Also the search for your friends via your address book just automatically sends out invitations to your friends already on twitter. So it’s not likely anyone actively searches out a specific person on twitter to actively follow them. It just kinda happens – and then you read the tweets of whoever writes.
- I actually think it’s fun! Just silly, mainly meaningless, in-the-moment fun!
While revamping parts of my blog (and probably just procrastinating from writing the big slightly overdue post about my wonderful trip to Ohio), I decided to find a widget to add my twitter feed to my blog. It’s now at the very bottom of the right column. So it’s not in your face. But if you’re curious to read what I think about the prices of bottled water at the airport – you might just find the answer there.
And if you have a twitter account yourself, let me know so I can follow you.