Twitter is not for the socially faint-hearted

When I first saw twitter (the interface) many years ago, I thought it was a bore. 150 characters? Ugh. Who wanted to work with alphabets.

And then I got onto facebook. Until it got trashy as hell. Then I went back to twitter and began to appreciate the beauty of 150 characters. I also began to see its purpose and utility.

When I voted for the first time in my life, twitter was engaging me, making me feel like change in Pakistan was actually taking place. That’s probably true for facebook too. But Twitter meant business. It was reporting. It was literally driving the change.

And so then, Twitter became my source for the latest, for the most recent, for the yet-unbroken source of news.

And then I witnessed the way Television anchors used Twitter for their programming content. It was as if noone needed real people to report news. Everything on twitter became credible for media houses. And that was an incredible thing in itself.

Twitter has taught me and the better part of the social media world the charm of hash tags. It has brought in these trends that bring throw backs and special days in tweets. It’s got the favorite buttons that’s actually a star and an RT call that’s just the most amazing connection that could possibly exist in the virtual world.

Twitter needs your commitment. It asks for it. If you don’t like social media, you cannot survive twitter. Because twitter is all about commitment.

And then how can we forget? Twitter has given a whole new dimension to the bird. The bird’s no longer the animal with wings. Its got tweets. And retweets and quote retweets and follower plus unfollowers. And the poor thing also has analytics.

My analysis on twitter is short and sweet. I like twitter and I like the way people respond to the social activity on the platform. I don’t think you can fake being a twitter fan. It is definitely a serious effort and if you try to do it as a part time thing, you will never really succeed.

You have to have a passion of the tweeps! You need to feel the need to share, to inform and to feel the rush when someone retweets you. Its addictive. yes. But more than that, its building relationships over information.

And it’s not for the socially faint-hearted.