A first look at Twitter reminded me of a murder of crows sitting on overhead wires criss-crossing a twilight sky.
A first look at Twitter reminded me of a murder of crows sitting on overhead wires criss-crossing a twilight sky.
The cawing would continue, alternately in chorus and lone bursts. But Twitter was novel. It had anonymity, the challenge of rolling thoughts into 140-character tweets, proximity to celebrities, and my chance to be famous, or almost.
On January 13, 2009, my first tweet read: "Well, one always starts somewhere. So here I am. I will follow and be followed. And learn the ropes along the way."
One of my friends had close to 1,500 followers by then. He had been "on Twitter since 2007," he said. Bloggers had formed their 'we-are-eminent-bloggers-and-Twitter-belongs-to-us' nexus. I started to learn the ropes on Twitter, one tweet a day. Follow, unfollow, block, reply, add to favourites -- these filled up my Twitter life.
What does one do when one is lonely in a gathering, has seen an amazing sunset or needs help? Tweet
But the early days were dull. I'd follow people and most wouldn't follow me back. I'd talk to them and they wouldn't reply. I decided to be a Twitter Quitter for good. But sometime in early March, out of sheer curiosity, I signed in again. Surprise. I actually had quite a large number of followers. Some I had started to follow were following me back. Thenceforth, Twitter became my newspaper and radio (all those blip.fm songs) in the morning -- national dailies and wires tweeting headlines even before the paper is put to bed, book reviews, movie reviews, music reviews and all the gossip you may actually want.
One would find four tweeple competing at trending with hash-tagged topics -- it could be a writer, a SoBo queen, an editor and a crazy 30-tweets-per-hour twit. But I'm not a trending topic person. There are times I get into serious discussions with friends in the West as well. Those nights I make do with a power nap (@pwryogi tweeted that four hours of sleep is all the mind needs to refresh itself).
Funnily, I even started dreaming in tweets. Work started getting piled up. But I can't complain about Twitter. I love tweeting: breakfast, traffic, jokes, movie clips. There are days when I spend close to 12 hours on Twitter, from the Web and Blackberry, but that doesn't make me an addict. What does one do when one is lonely in a gathering, has seen an amazing sunset or needs help? Tweet.
Aspirations: I want to be followed by the Twitterati. I want my 'intelligence' re-tweeted. And someday win the Shorty Award.
ADVERTISEMENT
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
