Recommendation of the Day #23

Recommendation of the Day: Thoughts on Twitter

Since joining Twitter a few weeks ago, I've been going over in my head again and again how I want to use it. It's become a complete phenomenon over the past 6 months or so, and I swear that I read a new article on it every single day, in addition to "appearances" on The View and Oprah. From my perspective, the thing that makes Twitter so great is that there are very few rules, and every day, people are finding out new ways to use the micro-blogging service. For some people, it's a way to keep friends and family updated on their life ("I got into college today!" or "I just got a new job!").

For others, it can be a type of self-promotion or an attempt at internet stardom. Looking at some of the most popular people on Twitter, you can see that people who were "nobodies" before Twitter now have hundreds of thousands of people following their every move and wait with bated breath for the next update. And in a lot of ways, I think that's really cool, to see lawyers, doctors, journalists, and businessmen admired in that kind of way, for posting about their daily lives, however mundane they may be. Traditional Hollywood celebrities will always have people interested about them, but consider that Agent_M, a Marvel comics editor and writer, has over 208,000 people following him. Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh is another Twitter celebrity (his most recent update? "Enjoying one of my favorite meals: hot Reuben sandwich, chicken noodle soup for dipping the sandwich in, and a pickle of course")

But all of this transparency can come at a cost, I think. In a world where we all want to share what's on our minds and appear funny, witty, or interesting, the concept of "tact" has gone out the window. Just last week, a woman tweeted

Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

Tim Levad at Cisco saw the Tweet, and tweeted back:

Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.

The woman was not offered the job because of what she (truthfully) wrote on Twitter. You certainly can't blame CISCO for rescinding the job offer, and the girl was operating under the assumption that nobody but her friends would read it. I guess this whole issue reflects a lot of the problems with the Internet and social networking sites in general.

Nothing you ever write online will ever truly go away, and you never know who is watching (or reading), and I guess for me, I've been really conflicted with Twitter and this whole privacy thing. While I absolutely love my job and everyone there, there are bound to be certain things I don't like on occasion, and I'm having a hard time figuring out what Twitter means to me and how I will use it. And while it's certainly easy to say now that I'll always show restraint in talking about my personal or professional life, certain unforeseen circumstances may make it tougher. Everything I've posted so far has been totally innocuous, I've always been a pretty honest person, and I find great relief in having nothing to hide. Still, the possibility that someone will see something they shouldn't will always be there as long as anyone can see what I write.

One of my biggest passions is finding new music and turning other people on to it, and the idea that people would want to read what you write is an exciting and intoxicating possibility for anyone. In that way, the idea of having a "public" twitter is exciting. On the other hand, it's nice to be able to have at least some semblance of control over who sees your tweets by making it so that people have to request to follow you.


I don't even know where I'm going with this anymore. I could talk/write about this forever, and I'd never come up with a cohesive thought in my head on the subject.