Twitter, since I ever came across, it has been getting severe mockery from many corners ranging from ex-colleagues to more recently the Times. A pattern I have recognised is that the people who slag Twitter never have actually used it and what galls me is that the journalists who dig into people’s history just to find the most inane Tweet they can find.
One of my favourite Wilde quotes is “If one tells the truth, one is sure sooner or later to be found out.” When I saw my ex-colleagues slagging Twitter off what I tended to see was someone being left behind in today’s world. Now that is not to say that these people are bad workers but just that they are not able or willing to embrace the technologies of today and are therefore not able to work as efficiently as others. One thing about change is that it happens. If you walk about with your fingers in your ears people will walk away before you have noticed anything different.
When I read articles such as Andy Pemberton’s in The Times I just wonder how long this smug belittling can last. Water finds its own level. To explain this I get the most of the news I am interested in in advance of the large media machine spewing this info to me and most of it comes from the people I follow in Twitter. That says more about how to use these tools than the lazy journos will tell you. If you want to find out about what time Jonathon Ross goes to bed with his wife then follow him. If you want to follow people whose conversation you respect then that surely is a better use of the tool. Yes I am a follower of Barack Obama, Akira The Don and Stephen Fry to name but a few. (Fry is an excellent user of Twitter.)
Of course Twitter has got a lot of noise but then again so has conversation. And that is what Twitter is to many – conversation. If you want to use Twitter but are being put off by the real twits who are slagging it off I suggest you jump in and give it a try. It only takes up as much of your time as you allow it to. Usually you will find that within days you will have got some use out of it that you would not have got from anywhere else.
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