November 3, 2008

Tweet Me, Baby! Tweet Me Good!

I just got a “Tweet” from Barack Obama – me and 111,829 of his closest friends. Make that 111,831. Two more people started “Following” him while I was writing the previous sentence. Whoops, 111,837.

Obama sends me a Tweet to let me know whenever he is about to give a stump speech. I also get up-to-the-minute news flashes from CNN and NPR. And 12 minutes ago I found out that Maggie Mason in San Francisco (8,127 Followers) doesn’t get much exercise in “the muscles you use to whip your head from side to side when dancing with tequila in hand.”

You gotta love 21st Century!

If none of this makes any sense at all to you, join the crowd. What I’m talking about here is an online service called “Twitter,” the latest way for anybody with Internet access and a cell phone to keep the world posted, in real time, on how awesome you think Heidi Klum’s Halloween costume was.

The way it works is whenever the mood strikes, you post a short text message to your Twitter page. As soon as you do that, anyone who has decided to Follow you gets this valuable information on their own Twitter page and on their cell phone. Eight seconds ago “mazui” said;

 “次会う時まで持っててもらっていい？じつかねさんの画像まだ捜し中”

I guess that settles that! I’m almost completely sure that mazui’s post has nothing whatsoever to do with carrot cake, a crash helmet and a jar of Vaseline.

I found out about Twitter a few weeks ago when I listened to a presentation by a public relations expert. Once I got over the fact that this guy, who is clearly at the peak of success in his profession, was a good deal younger than the shoes I was wearing, his ideas began to sink in. It turns out that, at least as far as any kind of exchange of ideas goes, the world has shrunk so much that you can carry it around in your pocket with your car keys and your Rolaids.

Of course, to most professional writers the Internet is the greatest thing since cold beer. Years ago I would finish typing the final draft of a piece, slide it into an envelope, scrounge around for enough postage stamps to get it where it had to go, then sit back and crack myself a cold one. It would be at least a couple of weeks before I got any sort of feedback.

Now I can hit the “save” button when I post a column, and have a comment from a reader in Indonesia before I have a chance to get a thumbnail under the pop top.

And unless you’ve been living in a Turkish prison for the last few years, you are probably familiar with the concept of “blogs,” where someone who is not necessarily (or even remotely) a writer can maintain an online commentary for anyone who is interested in hot topics like Siamese cats (as of today there are 37,752 Siamese cat blogs), boogers (59,781) or cheesecake (631,700).

This Twitter thing is a little bit different. For one thing, you have to pretty much get right to the point with what you have to say. Because they are meant to hit cell phones as text messages, each “Tweet” consists of a maximum of 140 characters, including spaces and punctuation. Here is a maxed-out Tweet:

The challenge we all face is to keep our breakfast cereal free of St. Bernard droppings. It goes without saying; or at least it should have.

So now I have a way to instantly keep track of Barack Obama’s campaign stops, the latest international headlines or the outcome of this morning’s bagel run by Biz Stone in Berkley (two salt, two garlic, two everything).

Now I just need to figure out why I like it so much.

Copyright ©2008 Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group.

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