Take me to your Twitter

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A newbie to the nest

I know it’s important not to measure one’s worth in followers. But after a fortnight of being on Twitter, I’ve amassed (yes) nine followers. One-third of these are related to me. As you can see from Angus Russell’s post about Twitter last week, he is beating me by 220 followers. Not that it’s a competition. It’s just that my mum doesn’t use social media.

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For such a long time, my friends have raved about how good Twitter is. These Twitter pushers hang out on every corner, opening their trench coats to flash you something to weaken your resolve: Chat with Dr Karl! Be nerdy with Shakespeare Geek! Come this close to Stephen Fry!

I believe I am converted

In two weeks, I’ve become a tiny convert. I don’t have an iPhone, so all my tweeting is done from my home, at my computer. And like all good distractions, Twitter has taken me away from important things, like doing assignments, or unstacking the dishwasher, or standing up.

For me, the attraction of Twitter is the ability to see how others tick. I love the connections you can make with a broad range of people beyond your own friends. From the other side of the world—or just around the corner—I can communicate with people whose lives and interests are similar, or very, very different. By following @BreakfastNews I can learn a little of what’s happening in the world each morning. On Sunday I followed GetUp Australia’s #SayYesAus campaign, with its dozens of updates each hour. I’ve learnt about adding a hashtag to highlight common topics that groups of people may be interested in (it seems to frequently be #justinbieber; a few weeks ago it was #rapture.)

One final word on words

As well as using Twitter to chat and check out photos of friends in distant places, two of my mates are online word game addicts. Scrabble—and games like it that allow you to humiliate your loved ones with a perfectly placed “Qi”—has an authoritative dictionary. Last week, it added facebook to its list of allowable words. Not Facebook, the proper noun, which is Scrabble-illegal, but the lower-case verb, facebook. As in, “After I tweet my sister and fruit-ninja my nephew, I will facebook you my recipe for banana bread.”

I am @WordsAndCo. I am extremely #grateful to @Bluewire_Media for a fantastic internship. Thank you all for having me.