I'm going to Tweet this

One of my goals for this summer is to become (re)acclimated to online social media.

In part, that means becoming – once again – a presence on Facebook. I was once a Facebook addict, but that was a long time ago, back even to the days when it was a semi-private college network that ran exclusively on computers.

Since then, I’ve kept an eye on it, but I’ve largely lost touch with that massive engine of keep-in-touchiness. And when I go back now – maybe a couple times a week, it feels a bit foreign, like I’m blindfolded with a carburetor in my hands. I set it down quickly.

But, I want to change that, so I’m going to force myself to spend more time on Facebook, exploring and analyzing its new nooks and crannies and corporate buy-ins.

The other part of my plan, though, is perhaps more momentous (so maybe I should have led with this): I’m going to join Twitter, a service I once considered antithetical to humanity’s progress. But I’ve changed my mind, and for a few reasons, namely:

In fall, I’m joining a communications department, which is typically more forward-leaning than English departments. In fact, many of my future classmates will be studying some form of online social media because their significance at this point really can’t be overstated, and I want to be able to hold intelligent conversations about these new and important machinations.

Personally, I probably won’t be studying online social media specifically, but I will likely study the practice of journalism, and much reportage nowadays is done on Twitter. There are probably a couple dozen or more discrete Tweets per day that are directly transcribed to some ESPN service or another. But if I’m on Twitter, I won’t have to wait for ESPN to find and filter those oh-so-important Rashard Mendenhall and Tiger Woods Tweets.

Finally, not only am I moving departmentally, but I’m also moving geographically. Facebook, etc. are great for moves like this because – as my students always tell me – their great for keeping in touch with old friends! That’s really only occasionally true, but online social networks are great for building relationships which I’ll need to do in my new locale – in fact I’m already doing that on Facebook.

So, if you want, you can follow me on Twitter, @BISdom22, as it goes. Or, if you’re reading this on my actual blog site, you should be able to read and follow my Tweets from one of the gadgets on the right. But if you’re reading this on Facebook (where my blog posts appear as notes), which is more likely, then you’ll have to find my Tweets through Twitter (or my blog site) because – as far as I know – Twitter and Facebook don’t get along since Twitter is antithetical to Facebook’s progress.

Question of the Week:

Will Facebook and Twitter exist in 50 years?

My take: Having dealt with both for the past hour or so while writing this blog, I’ve decided that there are some significant and avoidable redundancies in the two services, so I’d guess one will outpace (and eliminate) the other. So, kind of, I guess is my answer.