Yesterday, I was listening to a podcast of Slate magazine's Culture Gabfest. The three hosts were talking about their experiences with Twitter. Basically, they were all skeptical of the site/app/lifestyle, but given that Twitter has really taken off (14 million users, 2.25 million tweets a day, 700% increase in visitors in the past year), they felt obligated to try it. And they were all surprised how much they liked it.
So I finally caved. My resistance to Twitter, I suspect like most people, was that I didn't know why anyone would need to know what I was thinking 40 times a day. Who the hell am I? And why do I need to know what everyone else it thinking? And there's something disturbing about the ego-stroking nature of it all. In the new media, we're all important. Blah blah. But I also felt an obligation.
I've been twittering now for about 36 hours, and I can't stop. What I've found most surprising is that it's not all the meaningless status updates that I was expecting. Yes, there are quite a few tweets along the lines of "Went to the toilet again; drinking sooo much water today," but the real intrigue has been the new links, articles, sits, thinkers, etc. to which you are instantly connected.
So I'm a convert. It didn't take long. Look me up if you'd like. I feel like a kid in a museum of cool stuff.
Here's a sampling of some of the things I've come across (or, mostly, people I follow have shared with me):
Samples of rad infographics.
Merlin Mann
Dmitry Maximov
Ways to Improve Type