Leave me the tweet alone
Arjun Jassal -
Sunday, July 19, 2009 2:07 PM
140 characters can
change the world.
Ok, let me tone it down a bit. 140 characters can
help disseminate information on political upheaval (Iran), natural disasters
(China) and even terrorist attacks (India).
They can help connect politicians,
celebrities and sportsmen, to their dedicated fans, albeit in a ‘limited
way’.
They can help you and me, share our every thought, emotion and
just about anything we want.
Of course, as long as its in 140 characters.
Welcome to Twitter, which, unless you live on an unconnected lonely island
in the South Pacific (lucky you), has now been heralded as the latest
godsent of online social networking.
Thanks especially to
two completely unconnected, but powerful people, Ahmadinejah of Iran
and Oprah of TV, there seems to be no stopping this new network. Oh and
not to mention Britney Spears, who is decent enough to tell us about
every fight she has with... uh, umm, I-really-don't-care. And Ashton Kutcher,
who decided to talk about his once very famous, and now still more famous
than him, wife Demi Moore. Before I forget, it also hosts a word of
people who like to share almost every nerdy thing they can (these types
are usually people who I call friends). Their tweets can range between anything
from ‘XYZ is sleeping’, ‘ABC is eating’ to the agonizingly
exciting ‘PQR is tired’, ‘LMN is having an existential crisis’.
I am not denying the
fact that everything I mentioned above is news. If Iran is playing around
with the ballot, it is a matter of concern. If Oprah is making celebrities
jump up and down like apes that is also, at least for some people, news.
And if my friend wants the world to know that he’s awake, and can
now reply instantly to instant messages, well, that's news for people who
actually want to message him (I feel he’s kinda lonely). If they want
to know, all they have to do is to click ‘follow’, after they have
signed up on Twitter, and they can get a barrage of interesting 140
characters. Well, if they think it’s important they should.
But why am I ranting
about this? Because in the last three months, roughly 40 new people
have started following me. I know I should feel like a mini celebrity.
What’s fascinates me, though, is that I haven’t said anything new on Twitter
(which saying incidentally is called, hold your breath for the new zinger for
old stuff, a ‘tweet’) for over six months. If that wasn’t
bad enough, a significant portion of my followers are people I could
have stayed in touch with the conventional means of the mobile phone,
email or even sms, but I chose not to. I chose to stray on to the service
which, at least when I joined it, was reserved for geeks, so I could
have an inner circle away from the confines of the ‘others’.
Don't get me wrong,
I am not decrying the newbies who have stolen Twitter. Even when I was
on the service, I just found it more convenient to email or sms people.
In fact, putting things on Twitter from my phone was much more expensive
than calling someone and saying hi. Even when I stopped using the service,
and this may come as a surprise, I didn’t lose my friends. So since everyone
has been following me, with clearly nothing to follow, I decided to
see what they were saying to each other. I swear it was so quiet, that
if there was a real bird somewhere I could have heard it tweet.
Political action or
banal ‘news’, Twitter is just another social network that seems
to be in vogue right now. Twitter is now cool, so Facebook is bad. No
one wants to remember people who organized protests and circulated news
through Facebook or even email (yes, it does happen). And like
all fads, something else will soon replace it. We forget that online
networks are tools: as more people join them (especially if they are
celebrities), more people follow. But simply more people doesn't mean
participation or quality debate. That needs to fostered and nurtured.
And it’s not difficult to see this...of course, until something new comes
along.