Spot the Twitter chatter

By Paul Flower on Feb 26, 09 01:45 PM

Due to a combo of Microsoft 2007 and SanDisk Cruzer technology I lost the original blog that was intended to take this space. Ironic really as it was about the relentless march of technology, the overpowering nature of constant communication, and it was called blog will eat itself which is what eventually happened to it.

As a consequence I'm typing direct from my head to the blog site and avoiding any potential problems. The original stream of consciousness was spurred by the vast quantity of news-stories about Twitter. I joined Twitter around six months ago as I could sense that it was going to become big news and probably grow at the same rate as Facebook. I signed up initially to make sure I got my own name. Six months on I realise that most people use an alias or a nickname, which is the kind of payback I always get when I'm trying to be ahead of the curve.

Given that other people have written about it excessively I don't feel the need to explain it, this is despite the common consensus appearing to be that people don't really understand it or see the point. I understand that opinion and share it to a degree, but I like the idea of 140 character updates and it gives me the opportunity to be cryptic, which I love.

I'm following around 30 people - a mixture of people I know and people I'd like to know. In the latter group can be found the likes of Graham Linehan (creator of Father Ted & The IT Crowd) who seems to update on a very regular basis. As other more talented writers have pointed out it's interesting to see the updates of celebs and appears to be a further blurring of the lines between celebrity and reality, a true facet of the internet age.

The original blog (or what I remember of it) revolved around the thought that I personally find it increasingly difficult to keep a balance of all my work plus all my blogging - the latter category to include Twitter/Facebook, etc. I'm a relatively normal person, within acceptable boundaries of course, who has two blogs plus twitter, facebook, myspace and linked-in. Added to this I have four e-mail addresses, four phone numbers and skype. With so many communication channels how do we find the time to work and/or communicate effectively?

Noting that I find it difficult, how do celebrities with major commitments and busy lifestyles manage it? Currently they do, because it's a novelty I guess. The bigger it gets and the more messages they get I'm sure they'll begin to find it difficult - or start to look for someone to do it for them.

I make the latter point only because I know at least one major international star that used to participate in web-chats and interviews (off-camera) with journalists and fans. These people had no idea that they were actually 'chatting' to his PR. I'm sure this doesn't happen anymore (or at least not as often) but it'd be relatively easy for celebs to employ educated individuals to blog and twitter on their behalf.

There are many bemoaning the evils of social networking, claiming that it'll turn our teens into monosyllabic, antisocial automatons. How will we notice the difference from their normal behaviour? Psychologist have also claimed that it'll make users become infantilised, selfish attention-seekers - which instantly sounds like nearly every minor celeb I've ever known!

If the celebs do fall off twitter it would probably defeat the object of actually being on it for most of us. On that basis if you want something new to try I suspect that spotify will soon take off in a major way. Ignoring the fact that I'm amongst the last generation who'll probably buy CDs I like it a lot - free streamed music, what's not to like? Don't say I didn't tell you. In fact, given that I work with great radio stations, don't say I told you at all. At least not until we can do the same thing, soon I hope.

Here every week
Here all week