“Twitter me this”

Today’s daily grind is a bit of a mixed bag for me.
Let me explain.
Earlier this year my editor discovered a little something online called www.twitter.com
He thought it’d be a neat idea to jump on this new, micro-blog thing. Other news agencies use Twitter, politicians use Twitter, Lance Armstrong used Twitter to report a bicycle stolen. Heck, even President Obama uses Twitter.
Twitter allows a person to post really small blogs and limits posts to 140 characters. I said “characters” not words.
So as a reporter who can get pretty wordy I’ve had to adapt to this new environment.
On Twitter there are things called followers and follows. Followers are the ones who check out your Twitter, kind of like a friend on MySpace.
Follows are the sites/people you subscribe to, once again like MySpace.
I looked around on Twitter and found some really dumb stuff. Ok, that’s my opinion. I just find it hard to wake up and get on Twitter (as a person, not reporter) and post stuff like “I just brushed my teeth!”
At first all I did was whine. “I have to sign up for this? Who’s gonna read it? Why go to Twitter when someone can just log-on to our Website (or whatever site you get your news from).
After trial and error I’ve mastered, sort of, Twitter. When we (The News) posts a story online I post it to Twitter too.
But my competitive nature (or my “bull headedness) came out. I watch the number of followers and posts on our site. Just a week or two ago we had 40 followers. Today, that number is 70. (Yea, the numbers will change, I know, I know).
I find myself in a rush to get something on Twitter as soon as I can because somewhere, someone out there needs to know what news I’m posting.
So that’s my story. The love-hate relationship with Twitter.com
So, do you Twitter?
Mary Meaux