What's the tweet, tell me what's happening...

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

Henry David Thoreau

(American essayist, poet and philosopher, 1817-1862), Journal, 19 August 1851

Like this wolf photographed by Scott Ian Barry, peering up into the tree at a bird and looking rather puzzled, so too am I rather puzzled - by Twitter. Things such as Twitter have an unnerving ability to make me feel as though I'm too old and crusty to appreciate them properly, and maybe I am, but it seems to me that some people really could (and perhaps should) spend their time at better pursuits. The Internet has become such an extension of peoples' everyday lives, but just because you "can" do it, it doesn't necessarily mean you "should" join the latest online fad or fashion. I looked at Dr Maya Angelou's page and maybe she was "experimenting", but she only "tweeted" 4 times over 5 days - back in February. Perhaps she's found she prefers other ways of occupying her time?

There was quite a variety in the number and frequency of tweets on various accounts I looked at, and if it wasn't for this exercise, I doubt I would have even looked at that many. The content of the tweeting was as varied as the different tweeters and their subjects - but for someone who has only recently entered the world of phone texting, the Cookbook via Twitter to me was just a mess! I'm afraid I couldn't be bothered trying to 'translate' it, and can't really see the point in that one! I regularly follow a blog by author Jon Katz, and he also has a Twitter account, which I decided to check out. I can see the uses of Twitter, and I think Jon Katz's works well, combining tweets about events with thoughts and musings, without being too inane. I really like his attitude to all this though. He is currently incommunicado from his blogging and tweeting while he is taking an extended weekend break in the Big Apple - and reconnecting with real people, friends and family, in his life. However, from what I have discovered so far on this exercise, I am unlikely to be a regular follower of anyone on Twitter, and it doesn't entice me to become a tweeter myself - yet. Who knows what I'll discover when I do some Twitter searching for myself...