Tuesday
May062008
Fine, I'll Twitter
Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 08:31PM
So I've been Twittering a little lately. Just a little bit here and there for the last week and a half. I have to say, I don't find it addicting the way so many people claim to but I don't hate it the way I had anticipated. I'd call myself a casual and lukewarm Twitterer but a Twitterer nevertheless.
I resisted Twitter for a long time for a few reasons. First of all, I sometimes feel like I am public enough when it comes to the Internet. I often joke with the Loaded crew that I am the Rachael Ray of technology journalism. Not that I don't like Rachael Ray but I think she is grossly overexposed and I would hate for people to feel the law of diminishing returns when it comes to my online persona.
Another reason I resisted Twitter was the same reason that I don't blog on this site as often as I should. It is a lot of pressure to continuously produce content, especially for someone like me who produces content all day every day for a living. I have a daily news show, keep my Facebook status updated, and blog regularly. At the end of the day, I'm pretty tapped out of original thoughts.
Beyond the pressure to produce regular content is the pressure to produce interesting content. What if we all discover that I'm really not that interesting? That secret, by the way, is one that my family considers long-since out.
Finally, I really don't need the distraction. I am one busy girl. I am in a perpetual state of email bankruptcy, sleep deprivation, and being overwhelmed. I don't have time to hear about strangers and their cat feeding schedules. I barely have time for the people I love. This weekend my sister put her arm around me and said, "Lets talk about how you're going to devote more time to me."
Despite all of these valid reasons not to Twitter, I am doing it anyway. My reasons to Twitter are few but they include sheer curiosity, a desire to see if my random thoughts really do have a forum, and peer pressure from Cali Lewis. Besides, I had a Lucille Ball moment yesterday as I was emailing from my iPhone and trying to cross the street in SoHo. I tripped in front of a stoplight full of cars in a supremely ungraceful way. I looked around for someone to laugh with but no New Yorker seemed game for that. So I Twittered. I have to say, it was a marginally fulfilling outlet. I'll keep at it but don't say I didn't warn you if you find me uninteresting! :)
If you want to follow my Twitters, you can find them here.
I resisted Twitter for a long time for a few reasons. First of all, I sometimes feel like I am public enough when it comes to the Internet. I often joke with the Loaded crew that I am the Rachael Ray of technology journalism. Not that I don't like Rachael Ray but I think she is grossly overexposed and I would hate for people to feel the law of diminishing returns when it comes to my online persona.
Another reason I resisted Twitter was the same reason that I don't blog on this site as often as I should. It is a lot of pressure to continuously produce content, especially for someone like me who produces content all day every day for a living. I have a daily news show, keep my Facebook status updated, and blog regularly. At the end of the day, I'm pretty tapped out of original thoughts.
Beyond the pressure to produce regular content is the pressure to produce interesting content. What if we all discover that I'm really not that interesting? That secret, by the way, is one that my family considers long-since out.
Finally, I really don't need the distraction. I am one busy girl. I am in a perpetual state of email bankruptcy, sleep deprivation, and being overwhelmed. I don't have time to hear about strangers and their cat feeding schedules. I barely have time for the people I love. This weekend my sister put her arm around me and said, "Lets talk about how you're going to devote more time to me."
Despite all of these valid reasons not to Twitter, I am doing it anyway. My reasons to Twitter are few but they include sheer curiosity, a desire to see if my random thoughts really do have a forum, and peer pressure from Cali Lewis. Besides, I had a Lucille Ball moment yesterday as I was emailing from my iPhone and trying to cross the street in SoHo. I tripped in front of a stoplight full of cars in a supremely ungraceful way. I looked around for someone to laugh with but no New Yorker seemed game for that. So I Twittered. I have to say, it was a marginally fulfilling outlet. I'll keep at it but don't say I didn't warn you if you find me uninteresting! :)
If you want to follow my Twitters, you can find them here.
Reader Comments (19)
You will soon fall in love with Twitter :) I am so glad you are on.
I disagree with what you said about overexposure. One of the appealing aspects of your online presence is that you are not constantly producing personal content and juggling multiple services. You keep it professional and interesting. I never feel overwhelmed by your content unlike many other bloggers. I'll be nice and leave names out.
Hey Natali. I resisted Twitter for the same set of reasons (except the overexposure part). But then came SXSW, then NAB, and I found it really valuable way to communicate with people on the floor and around town. Now back at home, I'm using it now, but differently.
One of the good things about Twitter is that it can pretty much be whatever you want it to be.
So use it, in your own way. Enjoy! If it becomes a burden, stop.
My favourite way of receiving tweets is to grab the RSS feed and put it into the RSS Ticker Firefox addon.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2325
Then the tweets scroll at the bottom of my screen and I can give them secondary attention when need be.
I resisted twitter for the longest time as well. I solved the content creation cycle (at least a little) by installing a facebook app that syncs my twitters and Facebook status. That reduced the number of times I had to brilliant by one. '-)
Hello Natalie,
Well you should definitely devote more time for yourself! You deserve it.
Sometimes I find all these new virtual 'toys' overwhelming yet interesting at the same time too. But when I feel overLOADED, I just try to sit back and take a small break... and let the content come to me instead of creating it.
But I think you're always producing interesting content, so no need to worry about that. :) Keep on Twittering!
I've signed up for a twitter account and I'm following a couple people but it just doesn't seem appealing.
I don't post myself and whenever I check what people are writing about it's the same 2 people flooding the page with like 10-20 posts per day about nothing. Some people just have too much time on their hands.
I'm following you now. You better be interesting. j/k :)
You sound like a prime candidate for David Allens Getting Things Done methods—or at least Randy Pauschs Last Lecture/Time Management Lecture.
The last one is easier to start at, and very similar.
(Btw, followed the link in your twitter feed here...)
Don't worry about "producing content" on Twitter. The good (and the bad) thing of it is that 90% of the content is totally lame and pointless.
So I think the point is you don't have to see it in terms of producing content. If you just twitter what you feel at every moment you might discover the essence of it all.
I LOVE your tweets. They read like Joss Whedon/ Buffy the Vampire Slayer dialog. Except you are real and fight bogus tech rumors (if anything), not vampires.
Totally brightens the day.
I'm glad you decided to start using Twitter. Highly doubt that you'll be uninteresting. I don't think you would be the personality you are today if you had an uninteresting bone in your body.
Bah! I just recently got sucked in too after months and months of JUST SAYING NO! But I still don't understand how people can twitter more than... twice a day?
twater?? what the hell.. for those of us who dont know what that is???
oh yeah and when are you going to have more time for me???????
Knowing what people do and think on a day to day basis is interesting stuff even if you yourself might think it's not that interesting. I like reading other peoples stuff because it shows me how I think the same or different than others. I'm not a mind reader, but Twitter is the next best thing.
Oh, and I'm sorry to say but your Twitter swill never be as good as say Jack Bauer's. At least on a day to day basis.
Don't think you should feel guilty about not being totally crazy about Twitter. I feel the same way. Sorry to hear about your umbrella though, and that you're missing important episodes of Top Chef!
Perhaps, though, you turn your misfortune into an opportunity by adopting the Twitter trend du jour of offering prizes in return followers? You could give your broken umbrella to someone when you reach ten thousand followers? No, wait, there's something really horrible about that idea!
Having said that, I could see that Twitter might be useful for you to let people know about new episodes of Loaded.
Just for the record, I find your tweets very interesting. I must admit that prior to stumbling on your twitter I had not heard of your work, but after reading a response to one of your tweets and looking at your blog, I was delighted to find another good looking, technologically advanced hispanic in the web world.
This is where Twitter came in handy for Cinco de Mayo, it gave me that extra flavor of info during the day and insight to how others were celebrating or not celebrating and their thoughts during the day. I especially liked your NY Mexican food comments. =)
Take care and keep on tweetin',chica!
Hand written letters get wiped out by email.
Email gets wiped out by blog feeds.
Blog feeds get wiped out by pownce, twitter, and mobile text.
In each transition, the text of the message gets shorter and shorter.
Soon, we will simply send punctuation marks back and forth, to show we care.
`-_@-;!!!
sunsnapper has a GOOD GOOD POINT!!!... I agree!