Archive for December 29th, 2008

“Twittering,” a social media application, is more and more becoing all I do on the computer. It has replaced journaling on paper, writing pieces longer than 140 characters, and reading. Checking my “thread” (the updates of the people I am following) on www.twitter.com has become my newspaper, my phone and my email. When I get up in the morning or return to my desk from a trip out on the town, I don’t check my email, I check twitter.

For a while I told myself that I was just working on promoting this blog. I was just keeping up on local and national news. I was making a few friends. Then my husband accused me of sustituting the 450 virtual friends on my account for real interactions with real people. I was stung to the heart. Then I was picked up by the “twitter addict” robot even though for weeks I had been avoiding using the word “addict” in my posts. How did that happen? It seems a twitter-friend mentioned me on one of *his* posts in conjunction with addiction and that aroused the robot’s interest.

I was worried. Had I been spending too much time on Twitter?

I read an article on limiting Twitter time use. It said no more than 30 minutes at a time. It said use a kitchen timer. I took another sip of coffee, looked at the screen. “I’m not as bad as those people who need to do that,” I told myself. “Besides, I get lots of good info from Twitter. Who knew before everyone else in the house about the attacks on Gaza?  Who has links to websites all over the world, on topics from blogging to dating to writing to Christian living? And if I need help as a webmaster, all I have to do is make a post and explain the trouble, and help is on the way. Twitter is like a treasure trove of SEO and WordPress experts.” I took another sip of coffee and visited Chris Brogan’s blog.

How much time to I spend on Twitter? To the best of my knowledge, about 2 hours a day. Is that too much? Because my family is starting to act as if it is. Kids come up and say, “Mom, will you ever get off that Twitter site?” I defend myself, crying out

“Leave me alone! Anyway, I’ll be off in just a minute!”

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Of course I’d like to mention that if you do social media, you can follow me on Twitter at @FWRenaissance. I’ll follow you back, in general, provided you’re not a robot, promoting a dating service, or a multi-level marketer.