Updated thoughts on Twitter

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Remember my first take on Twitter? Though much has not changed, I have started getting the swing of the thing. And yes, I have started following others and listening to them. It sure has been beneficial to me. I found a lot of good stuff about writing and other topics of my interest; many, many people share their thoughts and enlightening experiences that I hook myself to the tweets regularly for my "daily dose of wisdom." It's been interesting so far.

As the wise cbjerrisgaard had commented at that time, "Start with a small group of people you find interesting, look at who they follow, use tools like wefollow and twitter search to find the rest. Then - interact. The rest takes care of itself."

I can now understand the obsession one could have for the Tweetland chatter. There are no rules on what you tweet about, or how. Except that each message should stay in 140 characters. You broadcast anything that comes to your fingertips, and if your followers like it, they take it forward through a reply or a Re-tweet (RT). When your message is RT-ed, you will know how far it has travelled, how many people have RT-ed it. You can use Twitter to promote your product, think out loud, catch up with old friends, make new friends, get breaking news, make news, or simply spend time. The fascination that Email once held, later blogs, and then mobile text messages, is now taken over by Twitter.

Sometimes, the number of tweets at my 'Home' still overwhelms me, but if I have the time and patience to leaf through them, I find several good reads and info, enough to keep me engaged for hours on end. For instance, a few days back I read about how independent or self-published authors can put up their books for sale in the Bangalore Book Festival-'09, coming up next month (Nov 6-15, 2009, at the Palace Grounds, B'lore). A couple of months ago, when I sent an Email to the Book Fest official site, I received absolutely no response. I had almost given up on the Book Fest. So this would give me an opportunity to give my book the kind of exposure it needs - thanks to Twitter.
(Also read, Times of India article on the Book Festival.)

I was surprised to find that I do enjoy chatting with absolute strangers from different parts of the world, on topics I like. Once upon a time, the very thought would have totally put me off.

There is no place for Boredom or Idleness in the world now, when there are applications like Twitter to wallow in for hours. There only seems to be Procrastination (at least, in my case). But there are many who Tweet and Work, or Tweet at Work, or Tweet between Work, and for whom Twitter is The much-needed Energiser that drive them up the mountain.

In case you are interested, Follow me on Twitter.

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