Twittermania?

Do you Tweet? Well for the past 2months I have Tweeted once a week on Twitter for my Digital Class and I just don’t get it. I mean what is all the fuss about? Twitter is the big new name in social networking with celebs from Katie Price to Russel Brand using it, even Barrack Obama has a Twitter site so it would realistically make perfect sense that a young girl, who could be described as perhaps being slightly celeb obsessed, would want to be at the hub of all things Twitter related. For this girl it’s simply not the case.

So I think that in the case of my experience on Twitter it’s probably best to start at the beginning, as Maria says in the Sound of Music “It’s a very good place to start.” On the 24th of February I set up my Twitter account and was ready to be inundated with information and friend requests etc. however it just didn’t seem to role like that. Twitter in fact seemed like a lot more work than I was prepared to give. I was however willing to give it a chance. I searched for some people to follow, classmates, newspapers and others involved in PR but then I was distracted and started following Heidi Montag, the productiveness of Twitter thus started to decrease.

These initial judgements of Twitter are perhaps negative as a result of the little action I had taken but even as I started to blog and post links to Blogger I just felt no one was interested in what I had to say. This is not to say what I was saying was dull its just there are so many people on Twitter saying such a variety of things that I felt I often got lost. Perhaps I should have taken a more proactive manner and used shock tactics to increase the number of followers I have (which currently sits at a tiny 13), maybe the comments I was posting weren’t startling enough. But really how exciting can I get when I just want to let people know that my blog is now on Blogger, particularly when I only have 140 characters to do so in.

I currently have a Facebook which I admit to using daily and a Bebo page that hasn’t been touched in years. I feel that the time I waste on Facebook could obviously be spent on more productive things but it is now so ingrained in modern culture that I would find it difficult to wean myself off the Facebook drug. Perhaps it is for this reason that I have not allowed myself to be overly accepting of the Twitter craze, I certainly don’t need a new addiction taking up time that could be much better spent socialising or, as exams approach at great speed, studying.

I don’t want to come across as being completely against Twitter because I am not; I simply haven’t been swept off my feet with it yet. I will however highlight what I think are the merits of Twitter and then allow you to decide whether Twitter is for you or if like me you just can’t be bothered with it. Twitter does allow you to have instant information often before any news outlets can, you get news in real time. From a PR perspective it allows companies to connect with a mass audience, and do it on the cheap, where feedback can be given and ideas can be developed.

Perhaps when I enter a working environment I will truly understand and appreciate the bonuses of Twitter, however until this happens I will remain a Facebook fanatic and a distant member of Twitter of the community.