Twitter: a newbie’s impressions
So I bit the bullet and signed up for Twitter a few weeks ago. I look at it most days, but have to say that so far it hasn’t changed my life. I had wondered about its use professionally, and having signed up for a few health-related tweets and also some eastern European ones, I’ve found some odd snippets of information that were useful to know, and can say that one of my followers is the former speaker of the Moldovan parliament (I think he just follows everyone who follows him, it’s not actually that impressive!).
The best thing though, so far, is having signed up to the Viz top tips tweet. I just loved the books, and getting random top tips has really cheered me up at times. My favourite one by miles:
“WOMEN! Stop your man from reading your emails! Simply rename your Inbox “Instruction Manuals”!”
Hee hee! 
The end is in sight
Or the beginning, depending on how you look at it! I’ve finally today (after ages procrastinating, which I’m sure will come as a huge shock to everyone) finished writing up my reflections on the 35 hours of study (which at times felt like 35 years) that I’ve done over the last few weeks in order to qualify for re-entry onto the nursing register. Now all I need to do is magic £76 out of thin air to pay for it, and persuade my friend to write me a reference (she’s just about the only person I can think of who fits the bill: qualified nurse, known me over a year, has had contact with me in the last 6 months. Never mind that our contact over the last 6 months has been primarily playing Scrabble on facebook, they don’t need to know that! Hopefully she’ll agree).
In other news, as several people here will have noticed, I have joined twitter. I know I was dubious and sceptical (I’m still not entirely undubious or unsceptical), but given that a. it seems to be being used more and more in academia and I think might be useful for networking, especially given that lots of people I’m interested in aren’t UK-based, and b. Moldova is having a rerun of their elections in July and Twitter played a huge role in mobilising people to protest after the April elections, so I want to watch what is happening there, it seemed like a good idea on the whole. At the moment it seems like the good bit of facebook that they ditched after the last upgrade (the friends’ status updates page), though that’s probably because I am mostly following friends so far. I also think that writing in 140 characters or fewer will be very good for me – I’ll struggle to keep my thesis below 100K words, so if I can get into the habit of not being so pompous and verbose then that will be a good discipline I suspect
Well, there’s been a fair bit of joshing about Twitter going on, with deeleea in the red corner thinking it’s great, and in the blue corner Miss Lisa being somewhat less impressed. Unfortunately Miss Lisa’s YouTube vid can’t be seen in the UK for some reason, but I found another one which made me laugh but which also sums up what bothers me about Twitter (occasional Fruity Language alert):
But. More and more people I respect (and in whose witterings I am generally interested) are getting the Twitter bug and raving about it. So guys, convince me. What are the non-inane uses to which Twitter can be put? Have you used it in a business capacity? Apart from describing your every last teeny tiny little action, what is it actually any good for?
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