To Tweet and be ReTweeted...

I have been using Twitter since the summer of 2008. I think that I joined because everyone else in my office started using it on the same weekend -- the weekend that our organization threw a massive conference in the Midwest that drew over 3,500 participants. Twitter was one of the many social media sites that conference goers were using to interact with each other and the outside world at the event. I remember the first few months being rather useless. I never went to the website (why would I?) and therefore never updated. Because I never visited it, I never saw what the people I was "following" were saying. I couldn't really see the point.

Later in the summer I read Clay Shirky's book Organizing Without Organizations and decided to give Twitter another shot. This time, I decided I would use it as a social tool for real life and I posted updates like "headed to the dirty" (read: the Dirty Truth, a bar in downtown Northampton) or "anyone wanna go to the show at the elevens tonight?" It was about at this time that I discovered the great advantages to syncing my phone number with Twitter. Within a few seconds I was suddenly able to send text messages to "40404" and sound off about anything.

But posting in the social media sphere is like bringing up the old kōan "if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?" Tweeting in the forest silently was pointless. Because I couldn't see what others were saying I completely lacked the validation that comes from using social media. I needed to experience what 140-character statements my friends were saying. And I needed to be sure that my "followers" were enjoying my contributions. In short, I needed interactivity.

In the last three months my use of Twitter has increased dramatically. I've tried syncing it to my Facebook status and mobile Tweeting, but the ultimate reward was installing an application that allowed me to see what the folks I was "following" were saying. TwitterFox was a game changer because it gave me the window to interactivity that I needed to make using Twitter at all worthwhile.

I follow an interesting crew of folks. Mostly activists, journalists, and information aggregators, nearly every Tweet I read has a link in it. I realized the other day that during this time when I am in still juggling full-time work and finishing up school there are many days where all the news I read is the news I get through my collegaues reports and the news aggregators I subscribe to.

There's an overwhelming amount of information out there. And it just makes me wonder still if the role of journalist is shifting into information facilitator. Someone speaking at a conference I went to recently put it quick succintly: The "who, what, when, where" is easy enough for anyone to find. But the why? That's where we need journalists most.