Thursday I went to my first ever tweetup, after a friendly invite from Andy.  I am very new to what I would consider “extreme” social networking, and I figured I would go, as long as I had a just as clueless person with me, so Chris agreed to come as well.

For people who do not know what Twitter is, it is almost stupid simple, but really difficult to understand, or grasp the "why?" in the concept.  Twitter allows people to microblog by posting snippets about what that person is up to that moment.  They are only allowed to post 150 characters at a time, so there are no dissertations or monologues to wade through.  I think the best way to explain it is that it’s like the facebook status part of your facebook page, Steve is…, but that’s all it is.  No massive profile pages with hundreds of photos and poke me invitations, just quick blurbs about what someone is doing.

Why?

I wonder myself sometimes, but it is growing on me.  It is a very opposite model of facebook in a lot of ways.  Facebook, you have friends already, so they become your facebook friends.  Twitter is you search for people that have similar interests as you, and you become twitter friends with them, because their daily posts interest you.  Of my 60 so twitter followers, I have met about 7.  I follow some fitness freaks, Apple fanatics, and some teachers.  Now granted, anyone can just post, "going to get a hamburger" and that isn’t really relevant, but the posts are usually more informational than not.  Because it forces you out of your comfort zone to meet new people, in certain cities, they organize events called “tweetups”.  This will probably never become a masculine word, so I’m expecting a flurry of texts/comments later about my manhood. Continue reading →