Tuesday 27 September 2011

Tweety Pie

Twitter is different to Facebook.  I use Facebook for people I know, and I don’t add people I don’t know as my profile has personal things on it.  Facebook friends can see what I get up to all day every day, where I go, what I am doing and who I am doing it with (as boring as that may seem).  I mainly use it for catching up with friends I haven’t spoken to in a while and for the photographs.  As much as everyone moans about Facebook and all the changes that are being made (really, are you THAT BOTHERED?) It’s the best tool I can think of for storing photographs online in a way your friends can view and interact with them.

Twitter is different.  Back when I first got Twitter, none of my friends had it.  I was alone in the big expanse of Twitter, floundering around, attempting to write witty tweets but not really having anyone there to read them.  I had Twitter for about a year before I really started getting followers and having conversations with people (I credit the start of my love affair with twitter to @colonel_doctor and @manpoodle, they are the ones that really started talking to me on there and encouraging me).   I find it strange that I have probably around 600 – 630 random people I don’t know, have never met and more than likely never will, following me and reading what I say.  I treat Twitter like an online diary.  If I think of something funny or have an opinion on something, one of the first things I think is “I should tweet that”.  If I tweet without prompt 50 times in 1 day, no one would take any notice (unless it was all in the space of an hour, that would be annoying).  If I did 50 Facebook status’ in 1 day, i’d be labelled a total annoying nutjob maniac (and probably have no friends left).

I talk to some of my followers every day, and there are so many different interactions going on.  There are people I know on Twitter that attend ‘tweet-ups’, where people on twitter all meet up in a certain place and have a drink together.  I know people that have formed relationships with people they have met on Twitter, romantic or just platonic.  I know people that have twitter crushes (crushes on people they talk to on Twitter, yet have never met).  I know people that make money from Twitter, and people that are genuinely upset when someone they like ‘unfollows’ them.  All of this stems from a person deciding one day to create a twitter account, and then post something interesting.  That one human action can result in all this, and I think that is pretty amazing.

I like talking to random people.  My friends think it’s a bit strange and take the mick out of me for it, but I like it (they have been known to refer to me as Tweety Pie in the past).  I don’t hand out my personal details, I don’t volunteer information about myself that could make me vulnerable.  My real name and location isn’t even on Twitter, so if you typed my name into Google it wouldn’t link to my Twitter account.  Some of my followers are in other countries, and some (one in particular) lives 5 doors away from me.  Some are similar to me, some are very different – I think that makes it all really interesting.

This blog, although not very successful right now, would not be anywhere near as viewed if it wasn’t for Twitter.  I feel comfortable with my followers reading this blog – it’s no different to reading my tweets.  I am more comfortable with expressing the real me in front of loads of strangers, as I don’t care if they judge me.  Facebook is different, i’m not sure if I want the people I talk to and see regularly to read it all.  My close friends and family are different, that’s fine, but random people I went to school with or people I see in the pub?  As much as they are people I know, they are too close to comfort to say whatever I want, but also too distant for me to be comfortable with them reading my thoughts.

I know i’m rambling now, so i’ll wrap this up.  This blog post is just a thanks to all my Twitter followers for entertaining me, making me laugh and stopping me from self harming when I am stuck in the house bored.  I genuinely do not know what I would have done without Twitter when I got snowed in on a Saturday night last winter and couldn’t join my friends on our weekly pilgrimage to Faces.  I was devo’d.

700 followers and counting eh?  I’ll drink to that J




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