And there you have it – one of my pet peeves about Twitter. How every second word is turned into adaptations and variations of the word Twitter and the messages known as tweets. Your words go out into the Twitterverse or tweetstream. People are Tweeple or just Tweeps. The cool kids are the Twitterati. And on and on. It’s enough to give you a Twitterache!
So what’s good about Twitter?
Dan Santow says the 140-character limit is a good exercise for anyone who thinks of themselves as a writer. “I’m becoming reacquainted with telegraphing information in a tight, focused way to grab readers’ attention. I’d forgotten how hard it is to write so few words but express so much.”
Jennifer Blanchard at Copyblogger suggests using Twitter makes you a better writer, by forcing you to be concise, use your vocabulary and improve your editing.”You have to know exactly what you want to say, and say it in as few words as possible.”
Shel Holtz says, “Far from a collection of short, standalone messages for the attention-challenged (as many see it), Twitter is frequently a gateway to more, deeper content” such as blog posts, breaking news, videos and photos.
And the bad?
Here are all these tweets pointing to interesting, useful, funny places you simply have to go and visit. It takes time, and I’ve noticed it also diverts bloggers from updating their blogs quite as often as they used to. (Ahem.)
Sometimz yr writing does not actually get bettr, becuz U edit this way 2 fit.
Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente laments that “There will soon be no one left with an attention span that exceeds 140 characters at a time.”
Her fellow Globe and Mail writer Ian Brown comments that “The absence of a central filter is what makes Twittering so pleasant and energetic and optimistic in the moment, and what makes it chaotic afterward.”
Well, with six million Twitterers in North America (six times as many as there were a year ago, apparently, although I can’t find where I got that statistic), there’s no denying Twitterville is a place you have to at least visit. You’ll find me on the beach under an umbrella @SueHorner.