Last year, when things were looking a bit down for me, a friend suggested that I start a “101 Things” Twitter account, mostly to post useful liberty info & thoughts.
It was a brilliant idea. I mean, other than the fact that hermits and social media don’t go well together. And other than the fact that I can barely even write my name in fewer than 140 characters.
Toward the end of the year, I bit the bullet and set up a Twitter account. Two of them, actually. But when one of them attracted a “follower” within 12 hours, I was so horrified I never went back, forgot my logins, and haven’t tweeted a word.
But I’m going to start. Really. And I’m following a few folks now, too.
I’ll probably be doing most of my tweeting as @101ForLiberty (so far, all of one tweet and that basically contentless). I’ll try to make my tweets as useful as possible.
I’m still trying to figure out how to get back into the other account …
Ugh. I guess I hope that works out for you, Claire. For me anything tw!tter-related is more like @Room101ForMisery.
I’m curious to know what particular value you see in doing this? You don’t seem to have a great deal of spare time as it is…
I’ve never seen a “tweet,” so I’m no judge, of course. But isn’t that were you tell the world what you had for breakfast and stuff like that?
Just wondering.
No, she’s going to tell us if Robbie had Mr. K for breakfast. 🙂
Just so you don’t stop this blogsite.
Pat — Oh, the things Robbie would tell us if he could tweet.
MamaLiberty and Kip — I hear ya. This is strictly an experiment. If I can come up with plenty of useful things to tweet, and if enough people want to read those tweets, I’ll keep it going. If not … not.
The idea — sort of a challenge to myself — is to tweet at least 101 freedom items you can use in the course of a year.
And don’t worry; it shouldn’t affect the blog. If it does, I’d quit Twitter before I’d quit blogging.
Um … but if I ever go on Facebook, I hope you send the nice men in white coats after me.
Who are you and what have you done with Claire!?
“Um … but if I ever go on Facebook, I hope you send the nice men in white coats after me.”
Already on their way. I just hope they get there in time!
Even I am on Twitter – search for FreedomOutlaw1. When I first started I wanted to use FreedomOutlaw but it was already taken by someone who does not tweet. Have not tweeted for awhile though. Have to get back into it.
But I find it useful to get information. I follow Karen DeCoster, Jacob Hornberger, Ron Paul, the Seti Institute, Judge Napolitano, and a few others. They always send out interesting links in their tweets.
So you now have a new follower. Keep the tweets coming, please.
Twitter is great for those of us who can’t string together elaborate thoughts and make points arise with facts/info to back them…..in other words, lazy….Unfortunately, I think Twitter will be a big force in “the revolution” if and when it should ever come along simply by the sheer nature of it’s quickness…..Unfortunately, to find the “troops” sometimes you have to wade in to where they all lurk in order to get their attention…
I use mine to complain about all sorts of non related things and randomly throw in “you should think about this” type links….I MISTAKENLY thought that my less than 5 followers would only be interested, but there’s a sneaky side to it where more people read it then they let on….
Yes, that is creepy to think about….
As for Facebook, I have and will continue to avoid that like it’s the plague that it is……
I broke down and experimented with twitter briefly. Bleah. Near’s I can tell, it’s only real value is in working as an incredibly inconvenient, high bandwidth, simulated RSS feed to drive traffic for people who can’t (or can’t figure out how to) otherwise do RSS for their blogs.
A possible second benefit I’ve deduced from reading may be that it lets brainless Snooki-sniffers pretend they’re closer to their pseudo-celebrity heroes without risking an actual STI.
(I’ll admit to a bias against the very name of the service, since I’ve been online long enough that “twit lists” were something you didn’t want to make it onto.)
Carl-Bear — Yeah, I don’t quite get people who use Twitter only to post links to their blogs. Boooooring. (Only slightly less so that tweeting about what one had for breakfast.)
And yeah … had to laugh when I first joined and their list of suggested people to follow was all of the Snooki or Kardashian variety.
BUT … long before signing up, I found Twitter useful for watching breaking news — particularly news like election results that I knew was going to be breaking so I could line up to watch it ahead of time.
naturegirl — I don’t understand Twitter yet, but I notice that I’m seeing all kinds of tweets from people I’m not “following.” Not sure how Twitter is choosing what to show me, but mostly it seems to be pretty on target with my interests.
Keep us informed. Everyone I’ve personally known who had a twitter account was someone I didn’t particularly care for. Of course I’m on FB (31 friends and I’ve learned never to add a new Girlfriend), so no judgments.
Claire, yeah, breaking newsfeeds is one good application for Twitter. I guess I forgot to mention it since it doesn’t pertain to what I DO (as oppose to read).
Speaking of news: One of the silliest Twitter users I’ve seen is a NH newspaper. On their front web page, they link to their articles. Except they don’t; the links actually go to Twitter; where they’ve linked backed to their web site. Using bit.ly or another URL shortening service. With all those cross-links, there’s a better than even chance that typos will prevent you ever reaching the bloody article. I quit attempting to get news there, though I would look in occasionally for laughs (They’re also notorious for bad editing and copyreading. My personal favorite being a concatenation of errors that claimed one of their reporters was running drugs and guns. While working as a prostitute. In the newsroom. Despite this, they consider themselves a serious newspaper with a solid rep. They also think they’re “web savvy” because they leaned about Twitter and URL services.).
I can’t say for sure if Twitter is glitchy or if it’s just the many comps I have had to use lately – it’s a challenge when you try to get it to do what you want it to, sometimes….and then you have to contend with what the ones you’re following have their settings on….
I have the opposite problem, I have to hunt down tweets that should be showing on mine, grr….
Oh, my aching eyeballs… 🙂 Just received my Cruz Reader android tablet so I can download e-books. So far have not managed to figure out HOW to download anything… but I’ll keep at it until I do.
Most likely that’s all the geeky goodness I can deal with for quite a while.
Good luck in tweet land, Claire. 🙂
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ohh my god,
the world is coming to an end
– time for me to head up to the retreat
– Claire’s Tweeting !!!!
It’s happened a few times now:
Claire, I can’t read your title without completing the sentence with “In all the old familiar places…”
Never tweeted, don’t really even know what it is.Is someone who tweets a twit? I have Facebooked sometimes but only because it is hard to talk to or get in touch with some folks with out it. Mostly a pain in the arse. My smart phone is neither.
I have a rule that if it takes more than 3 emails to make your point; make a phone call, if that don’t work you got to meet in the flesh. If that doesn’t work your flogging a dead horse and you should move on. Maybe I am a bit old fashioned?
Nicest part about Twitter is you don’t have to join it to read someone’s page (as long as they have it set to “public”)…..
So anyone can read it – https://twitter.com/#!/101ForLiberty
OMG, who knew? Well, I must have known, since I’ve occasionally read others’ Twitter feeds. But now that I known mine is hanging out there like that, I’ll be on my best behavior. 🙂
No on that best behavior thing!! Your headline specifically says…….
“Writer, artist, Freedom Outlaw, professional troublemaker.”
We “followers” have high expectations. ;-p
What Karen said !
Note to Claire, Twitter is great for never having to worry about writers block….drop the thought/idea and go, LOL….
“But when one of them attracted a “follower” within 12 hours, I was so horrified I never went back, forgot my logins, and haven’t tweeted a word.”
Sounds like my experiences with dating websites.
What’s twitter?
naturegirl (and helpful Twitter users) — Re: Twitter privacy, I know how to send a direct message to an individual user (unlike certain politicians 😉 ). But I just committed my first Twitter faux pas. Someone replied to one of my tweets. I then replied to his — and I see from naturegirl’s link that my reply is public.
Not TOO embarrassing. No naked photos or anything (as if!). Just boring content. Anybody know how I can make a reply to a tweet private?
Glad to see you there! I figure I gave up on online anonymity when I started my first BBS back in 1991… don’t be alarmed that a guy named @BoozeTalking is now following you… 🙂
Twitter is great for trending news, I catch a lot of stuff there way before it hits the mainstream…
Claire, re: Tweetie Bird across the street — did you say there was a Part III of Neighbor From Hell coming up?
There is, Pat. Either tomorrow or Wednesday, most likely. Just have to get one small deadline met first. Also have to think it out a bit.
Twitter is no substitute for lengthy content. But it might be a good place to post things that, right now, you collect into “miscellany” blog posts. Those sorts of things could fit into 140 characters easily. Long commentaries on liberty? Not so much.
And they’re useful. But thematically aren’t really the same kind of thing as your real posts. So why not use a medium more suited to them, to deliver them?
Matt, I’ve had that same thought — and in fact have already used a few links on Twitter instead of the blog. I’ll probably continue to do that, especially since some Santa Clauses have kept me well-supplied with good links lately. And indeed, that does seem to be one of the best uses of Twitter. Plus it would be easy. I like easy. 🙂
My aim, though, is to try to come up with “news you can use” — “101 freedom tips” — something like that for Twitter. I don’t just want to be one more person passing news links around.
Well, I don’t get anything at the link naturegirl gave except “join up”, and I’m not joining — so I do hope you put some of those links here.
If you tweet, everyone can see it, and a reply is the same thing….I never spent a whole lot of time in the settings section, so I’m not sure if there’s anything in there that can control that…..
Twitter is like Facebook when it comes to the communications part, the whole world can see it unless you have your account set to private (then no one sees anything except your followers)…..
I wouldn’t consider that a faux pas, altho you might want to keep in mind that it’s one of those things that gets eyeballs from unknown places 😉
By way of a friend who tweets …
You can get a twitter feed as RSS. For Claire:
http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=101forliberty
I hope BHM doesn’t reformat that URL.
jed — looks like the URL came through just fine. Worked for me.
Nice to have so many around who, when it comes to Twitter, actually know what they’re doing. Save me from myself! 🙂