All A-Twitter

Today I signed up for Twitter. I have read about 5 articles in major papers in the past week about Twitter, its rapid growth in the past months, its twitteraholics, and as the LA Times article yesterday said, its ultimate charm. There were awards this year based on votes by users for best Twitter accounts by category. And when you sign up, Twitter shows you a bunch of popular sites so you can "follow" them. I was fascinated and signed on to follow a bunch of political and news sites. I also found some sites about copyright and tech issues so after sampling some of their tweets I decided which to follow--yes to Wired and Eric Goldman, no to Lessig and EFF and Pirate Bay. I even found one that allows me to follow Hillary so now I will know where in the world she is.

Like my first days on Facebook I became a bit obsessed (just a bit) with looking at Twitter and sites and clicking on the tinyurls. So much information in such sound bite friendly size! But I did not get the same rush I got from Facebook in finding people, asking them to be my friend , writing them little notes and getting added as their friend and then looking at their friends to see who I knew. Sometimes I even got little notes back from people I have not seen in years or from people I see on a regular basis! Who would have thought so many people my age would be on Facebook? And then there are the groups and the postings that elicit comments and the status changes that elicit comments and the pictures of long lost friends and the links to news articles. My children call me a Facebook whore. But I do enjoy the combination on FB of information with interpersonal contact. The interpersonal contact, even as limited as it is on FB, is missing from Twitter as I have approached it. I don't want to use Twitter as a constant status update with people I know. I read in some of the articles that people do running commentary on Twitter about the mundane aspects of their lives-- I just got up; I am eating breakfast, yum!; I am heading out to work etc. Some people do that on FB and I do not really mind it since status changes are not as frequent there as on Twitter. All this access to information and others is exhilarating and scary at the same time. How much more of an ADD nation or world will we become?