I’ve been thinking about creating a Twitter account
To practically everyone I know, that sentence is probably tantamount to:
“I’ve been thinking about getting an email address.”
In other words they take 5 seconds to create, they’re free, and everyone has one. WTF!?
The one thing that’s been holding me back is a fear that it will slowly kill my blog. And I really really want to keep my blog alive!
The second hardest part is choosing a username. More than any other service, a Twitter username is the primary way to convey a sense of identity and personality. It’s the equivalent of your face in real life. That puts a lot of pressure on choosing a good one.
Yeah, I could go with justinsomnia or justincwatt, but I really don’t want to conflate my blogging or email/real life personas with Twitter. Sadly my first choice, jwatt is taken and unused!
It occurred to me randomly that an onomatopoeic curse word would be a REALLY FUNNY username. Imagine if your name was “argh” or “sheesh”. People would always be addressing you as if you were really annoying them:
Argh, why don’t you just make kale pesto for dinner?
or in twitterese:
@sheesh, haven’t you finished your holiday shopping yet?
That really amuses me. But it turns out they’re all taken! argh is pretty funny, and ack, doh, sheesh, bah, gah, geez, and damn are all taken (and largely unused).
Dunno, I guess I’ll just have to keep waiting for the perfect Twitter username to hit me.
omfgwtfbbg
ewww
ewwwww
ohno
notjwatt
jcwatt
arggh
ohno is a good one.
A little known fact about Twitter is their unofficial policy regarding inactive accounts. I believe it is 8 or 10 months. If there hasn’t been a tweet on an account for that amount of time, you can politely ask Twitter support to claim the name for you.
That is how I ended up with @m and @md. Not sure what the policy regarding never used accounts is though.
“ohnoes” in lolcats speek
I was just talking today to two people about Twitter, both of them are Twitters (or should that be Twits). I must admit that I have missed the proverbial boat when it comes to twitter. It is not that I have just heard about it and discovered that everyone is doing it already. No it is that I am a completely baffled as to the point of it. If the internet was made so that I can inform all and sundry that I am drinking a very fine Grande Latte in a very cute little rustic cafe while I happen to be doing that, then I think the internet has lost it’s way. Is this the high point of Wed 2.0? Or even the next step in human evolution? Sorry maybe it’s just meant to be a bit of fun.
But Is it just me that thinks twitter is the biggest load of… you know what that comes from a bulls posterior? I’m sorry my hands are up, I just don’t see the point.
So I asked there two twitters today to explain to me why? And their answer was that it is a great was to keep regular contact with people (but then one of them admitted that he has picked up a few virtual stalkers, strangers who are following their every move and one of his stalkers happens to be a priest, not that that means anything but… maybe it does, I don’t know) .
Fair enough, lots of your old mates who you don’t see very often keeping regular contact with you, them following you and I guess in return you following them. But (and the big But) what you should all realise eventually when you look up from you collective laptops, iphones, waps and other thingies and take a collective sip from your coffees, is that following each others little daily musings and micro moments is all pretty dull and ultimately very very boring.
Stick with the blog Justin, because the twitter thing might be just a step too far and there may be no coming back.
Any my humblest apologies for the long, dull and boring comment. I’m off to try to do something less boring now instead…
if you join twitter I will follow you :D
http://twitter.com/justin_watt ?
Mark D, I emailed we’ll see if I hear back.
Anon, I responded to your comment in a separate post, On blog comments and Twitter, because I think it represents a fairly widespread misunderstanding of what Twitter is. I have reasons for being reluctant to join Twitter, but they are wholly different from the perceived banality of tweeting.