Solo Practice

There is a lot of social networking sites out there, Facebook, LinkedIn, Naymz, Tagged, Pulse and on and on.  I'm on some of them and I enjoy the connections I've made but I know I have not fully utilized all of their potential.  But for some reason, they all seem like a chore to me.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm not knocking their potential. I do have trouble, however, with all the parlor games on Facebook....sheep throwing, etc.  I only have so much time in the day and by not being able to participate fully I'm sure I come across as aloof or snobby and that defeats the purpose of Facebook.  I'm officially apologizing to all my connections on Facebook.

However, Twitter is very different.  And I've been twittering now for almost two weeks. It's fast, easy and fun and I find I'm on it quite a bit.  It's kind of like really cool idiot-proof instant messaging to those who feel like 'following' your thoughts but not necessarily in real time. 

I also like the terminology 'following' better than, say, 'friends' on Facebook.  Facebook connections are really acquaintances or possible future acquaintances for the most part.  Twitter doesn't have that pretense.  If you want to follow someone else's threads you can.  They are not obliged to follow yours. You don't even have to really converse, just follow if you want. As a result of following some new people, I've uncovered blogs I would never have found. You can also block people from following you if you feel you must.

And I like the concept of 140 characters maximum per message, public or private.  Just quick conversations. You can also automatically upload feeds from your blog to Twitter through Twitterfeed.com or other programs you may uncover. You can see a really informative video here. thanks to Kevin.

From a networking and conversation perspective it is, in my opinion, far superior because of its ease of use, lack of pretense, and the ability to connect to people you would otherwise never really have an opportunity to connect with. 

Anyway, if you decide to check out Twitter look me up http://twitter.com/scartierliebel.