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Have relationships like rock stars: a Twitter exposé

Meera Atkinson September 30

Twitter hardly needs an introduction. Indeed its entire premise could be summed up in less than 140 characters – perhaps something along the lines of ‘a social networking phenomenon which began in 2006 and has since gone on to redefine the concept of micro-blogging across the board’.

Anyone who tweets will know that it is fast-paced, addictive and uniquely placed to promote both brands and personalities. Celebrities know it, as did President Obama and KevinRuddPM, all of whom have used Twitter to their advantage. On the flipside, it’s also a growing space for social interaction, whether this is showing off your plugged in personality, or forming unlikely friendships. In the latest edition of Meanjin, Meera Atkinson breaks down the experience of micro-blogging and what it really means to have relationships like rock stars. An extract is below. The full essay is also available on our editions page.

Sometime last year my ex-husband discovered Twitter and his ‘tweets’—mini-blog messages limited to 140 characters—started showing up on his Facebook page dutifully proffering answers to the quintessential Twitter question: what are you doing? Frankly, I couldn’t see the point.

But then all of a sudden it seemed like the world was abuzz about Twitter. My curiosity got the better of me and I signed up to see what all the fuss was about. By this time my ex had lost interest and no longer twittered and I expected to follow suit. In fact, as one who is not fond of inane conversation, the prospect of a flood of sound bytes from strangers left me quite cold. Even worse was the thought that you could not only twitter on the web; you could ‘tweet’ and be tweeted at via mobile phone. There’s even an ‘adult’ Twitter. Had humanity given up on the notion of peace of mind all together?
Twitter cuts a broad swathe across communities around the world, from soccer mums to celebrities, including Hugh Jackman and Ashton Kutcher, who beat CNN in a race to reach 1 million followers. Even Barak Obama twitters…


 

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