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One Month of Twitter: a Journey in the Recesses of the Internet
Twitter. The name draws scowls from people at school. Degraded, they complain it is "just Facebook statuses" and that the concept is not only unoriginal, but redundant. And yet, it is one of the most popular sites on the internet. I recall sitting on the floor of the Miami airport, while playing cards with my friend as we waited for our connecting flight to San Jose, and watching CNN discuss the Iranian elections. We, in our exhaustion, ceased to immediately despise the newscaster repeated the name Twitter on end. Most of the sources and quotes came from Twitter. So, not only had Twitter rocked the internet world, but it was starting to make a real impact in the sociopolitical sphere. But still I was not impressed. I got a Twitter account, of course. But my 100 tweets have been spread over almost a year. I barely logged on, and when I did I felt overwelmed by the multitude of 140 character tweets from blogs and random magazines and celebrities. I soon forgot about it. I'll probably delete that account.
But inspired by David Carr's article for the NY Times, I realized Twitter is not going away soon. It's here to stay, at least for a little bit. And to try and adapt to this, I have decided to actively use Twitter for one month. To see if it enlightens me, to say the least. I may sometimes feel like the Fail Whale (pictured above; Twitter's personal 404 error message), lost in the sea of tweets, but I will hold on. And I'll be tweeting about it the whole time. Hopefully I'll end the same way as David Carr:
And now, nearly a year later, has Twitter turned my brain to mush? No, I’m in narrative on more things in a given moment than I ever thought possible.
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