Working in Christian ministry, I hear the following question on almost a daily basis, from students, parents of students, and other people in ministry; “what the heck is twitter, and why do you use it so much?” In fact, theres been a few times when our pastor has even made jokes, from the pulpit about twitter, while looking at me smiling, because he knows I use it, and he thinks everything tech is pointless.. its great!
In the past few months, twitter has really made a growth spurt, news channels are using it, talk show hosts, bands, marketing companies, cities use it to advertise jobs and tourist information.. however, I didn’t start using it when Oprah announced she was using it, nor did I use it so I could get the latest scoop on John Mayer.. infact, its only until recently that I actually started following a couple celebs on twitter..
I started using twitter before it really became popular.. I thought it was a neat way to meet some people who do the same thing I do.. because I was able to search for tweets based on certain words.. so I would search for words like Youth for Christ, Worship and things of that nature, and still to this day, I’m one of 2 people in my town who use twitter, but the only one who uses it on a regular basis.. the other person is a student, who posts a few times a month..
So why do I use Twitter.. the simple answer is, I use it to meet people. One of the first people I followed on twitter was @chrisfromcanada he’s a worship leader here in Ontario, and he and I have chatted quite a bit since then, talking about worship and things of that nature… I use twitter to “meet” people who are interested in similar things to me..
I don’t have a huge list of followers.. I think its around 160 now.. and I follow around 210 people… one of the things I hate about twitter is the spam.. I get emails every day about a new person who has followed me.. and 9 times out of 10, its some annoying spammer.. so I block them.. I check my twitter follower list every week (once a week) and edit the list, get rid of spammers, follow some of those who are worth following..
I don’t follow everyone who follows me… I have criteria when deciding if I will follow you.. #1 if you don’t have anything listed in your bio, I’m not going to follow you, if I can’t figure out who you are, chances are, your out. If you don’t have a URL to a personal webpage, I’m probably not going to follow you.. I want to know more than “i’m a cool guy” if you have a personal site listed, and I can find out more about you, theres a better chance that I will follow you. If you have a raunchy photo, I’m not going to follow you, because if its a nasty photo, chances are, your just a bot trying to get me to go to a porn site, which I don’t want to do. Also if you have something on your page, be it in your profile, or in your recent tweets, about “gets hundreds of followers a day” I’m not going to follow you, because chances are the only reason your following me, is because some bot added me to your follow list… oh, and if you dont meet the criteria for me to follow you, your not going to follow me either, becuase I’m going to block you..
The other reason I use twitter is because its a quick and easy way to update my facebook status.. before I had my iPhone, I wasn’t able to update facebook from the crappy cellphone that i had, but, I could text twitter, which would then also update facebook.. it was very handy!
One of the things I love about certain twitter apps is that I can do a “nearby” search, which will do a search withing X Km’s (i tell it how many) and I can find people in the radius who are on twitter.. and through that, I’ve been able to meet some pretty cool people, face to face, while traveling.
I use tweetdeck, both on my macbook and on my iPhone.. it seems to be the best app I’ve found yet.. and I’ve tried them all.. trust me!
I’m not one of those people whose world comes to an end when twitter is down, but I do use it a lot.. it’s always opened on my computer.. and I’m one of those people that puts a lot of useless things on twitter.. not “taking a crap” or anything like that.. but, I do often tweet about when I’m leaving for lunch, or things like that.. but, thats the kind of stuff you put on twitter.. I mean, really, how much can you say is 140 characters?
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