Get your Twitter on!

Ever since I got into Twitter in 2010, I have been hooked. I've been frustrated for a while with the feeling of sorting through junk on Facebook; kind of like thrifting but without the cool find at the end of digging through everything. I would not say I am a pro at Twitter, but I am definitely pro-Twitter.

For my internship I'm creating a proposal of a campaign that encourages students to create and maintain an online presence for professional purposes. Right now I'm working on a "How To" for students who want to use Twitter, but may be discouraged by the seemingly complex culture of tweets, hash-tags and DMing. It's understandable. In order for Twitter to fit into the tidy 140 characters it requires enough shortcuts and abbreviations to have its own dictionary. As I start at the basics, I find myself enjoying social media even more. I have to really dig deep, finding answers to possible confusion. I am not writing a manual on the website, I am writing the two-page 101 course.

So why does this matter? Because in this world of instant information I have to move at a hundred miles an hour to keep up with my social media, my GoogleReader, my email and the news. The information overload is fantastic! I can find anything about anything (thank you Wikipedia) as long as it happens within five seconds. While I am grateful that many stories and blog posts can be skimmed in the five seconds (which no doubt anyone who finds this post will probably do) I need to make sure to remember how to dig deeper. How to find the important aspects of a news story or challenge and apply a new topic I come across.

Thank you, Twitter. In your 140 character world I found a slower way of keeping life together.