I'm thinking of joining Twitter

[dreamshark]

Should I use my real name?
Who should I follow?
What else do I need to know?


ETA: I signed up as sharonekahn and immediately forgot my password. I found their password recovery methodology inscrutable, so gave up and started a second account under the more compact name of sekahn. (Amazingly enough, sekahn was available but  dreamshark wasn't.)


I briefly followed the person who did have dreamshark and was vastly disappointed. I think it's a business account of some kind, but not clear.  Even more disappointing was the owner of sharonkahn, who appears to be a teenage stoner. I was expecting my googleganger (Sharon Kahn the mystery writer) but she seems to be using skahn. Probably because stoner sharonkahn beat her to the full name.


Anyway, if anyone wants to follow me, it's sekahn.

Comments

[vanaabegra.livejournal.com]

I held out for quite a while. I now use Twitter occasionally, but I follow lots of people.

Yes it is useful for micro-blogging, like "Headed to the Twins game, who else is going to be there tonight?" or "Look at this picture of me losing at Star Traders"

Actually I think the near instant photo-sharing is the big draw.

Downsides:
Grammar and spelling need not apply.
You will see the same things posted on Facebook, LJ, and I suspect sometime soon on Google+.
One more Social Network that is a huge timesuck.

Back to the plus side, between Twitter and Google+, I can almost forget about Facebook. The big plus that Facebook still has is the Event function. Once Google+ builds the equivalent and has a Twitter feed, I can forget FB.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I don't expect to tweet much. If I'm going to blog, I like the long form (e.g., LJ). I'm more interested in the one-to-many aspect for disseminating information, especially breaking news like today's DC earthquake (which I only learned about when I created my Twitter account almost as soon as I picked a few people to try following).

There does seem to be a lot of the FB-style inanity, however. I'm not sure how anybody actually follows more than a handful of sources without being overwhelmed by noise. I'm looking for actual information plus the occasional pithy observation.

I'm following mle292 because for some reason Twitter thought I should. And the members of the Slate Political Gabfest because they have lots of clever and well-informed things to say on their podcast, so I thought it might carry over to Twitter. And a few other people for equally random reasons.

Who else should I follow?

[mle292.livejournal.com]

And I am following you back! There's serious stuff too, but some of the funniest short form humor I've ever seen is George Takei's twitter account - GeorgeTakei

[ssussminh.livejournal.com]

I searched for you, but you must not have posted anything yet. Couldn't find you. As you start following people, if they follow you back, you can go through their list of follows. That is the best way to find people you might want to follow. Corwin is a font of great people to follow. This is best done with twitter.com on the computer, and not tweetdeck. I am, unsurprisingly, sgrandys on twitter.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Um... post? Gosh, that hadn't occurred to me.

Okay, now I'm following you. Follow me back?
I'm still trying to figure out this interface. Where can I see a list of people that I am following? People that are following me?

ETA: Oh, never mind, I see it. Right there on my home page, upper right corner. Duh.