Confessions of a Twitter Dweeb

Do you use social media?  Facebook?  Twitter?

I haven’t even been on Twitter a year yet, and that may be why I often find myself a little bewildered by some of the things that go on over there.

I’m a Facebook girl.  Since 2007.  I understand Facebook.   It satisfies my need for “social” in social media.   That probably categorizes me as a social media dork, considering the recent surge in Facebook-bashing I’ve seen lately, but I don’t care.

Twitter is different.  It often feels like the anti-social social media.  It’s completely unpredictable.  It’s millions of solitary souls floating in a sea of unanswered tweets.

I admit that when I signed up for Twitter, I really had no clue what I was getting myself in to.  I didn’t know how to tweet, I didn’t know the lingo, I didn’t know what a hashtag was.  I didn’t know much except that there was going to be a Twitter party during the Oscars and I wanted to be a part of it.  I wasn’t attending an Oscar party like I usually did and Huzbo hadn’t seen all the movies, so unless I live-tweeted, I would have nobody to dish with about the boring parts, gorgeous dresses, shocking speeches and amazing wins.  Quite literally – I wanted the social of this social media and there were no Facebook Oscar parties to be found.

I got my Twitter Oscar chat and it was fun and oh-so-social!  I was hooked!  I figured the more people I followed, the more people I would have to chat with.  This wasn’t Facebook, after all – I didn’t need to actually know anybody to follow them, or for them to follow me back, right?

Wrong.

I set out following people and celebrities and mom bloggers and interesting profiles like I was alone on a desert island, which essentially I was every other day because Baby Girl had started school and I was still at home.  Alone.  Lonely.

I made a pointed effort to especially follow fellow Canadians, because Canadians are friendly, nice and polite, aren’t we?  So just the fact that I was Canadian and they were Canadian would Twitter-bond us instantly, right?

Uhhh, not exactly.

I’m sure all of you superfly Twitterverse tweeps are laughing your asses off at me right about now.

You know exactly what happened, don’t you?

First of all, I got put in Twitter jail for following too many people at one time.  (Yes, Twitter jail exists, for all you non-Tweeters.   Twitter locks down your account until you cool your jets.)

Then I hit my 2000 maximum for accounts I could follow.   Twitter has a rule that you can only follow 2000 accounts, unless you have more than 2000 followers yourself.   You can only ever follow more accounts than those that are following you, if the spread is less than 20%.

Mine wasn’t.

In the early days, I had approximately 20 followers, and was following 2000.   The sad part is that I had no idea that this was extremely unattractive to most potential followers.  Nor did I realize that the majority of Canadians don’t use your nationality as criteria for following you on Twitter.

So I plugged along.  Slowly gaining followers by randomly commenting on other people’s conversations.  I read the tweets and learned that it wasn’t cool to follow too many people without almost as many followers.  My apologies to all the people I unfollowed during my unfollow parties.

So now here I am, only 10 months later.   Sometimes I feel like I get it, like I was actually invited to the party.  However, other times I still feel like that lost and lonely newbie who snuck in the back door and is standing in the corner watching everyone else have a blast.  Like I’m tweeting from outer space and Houston is unavailable.  I’ll spend 20 minutes making my amazing joke or statement fit into 140 characters (no easy feat for someone with my verbosity!), tweet it out and sit back to wait for the response frenzy that never comes.  Not a chirp. (See what I just did there?  Chirp? Get it?)

Then I’ll tweet out something I think is a bit lame or not well thought out, and get 5 responses.

The unpredictability kills me sometimes, and the frequent silence just makes me feel lonely and uncool.

Yet I’m hooked.

Twitter has become my world, federal and local news digest.  It is my gateway to my favorite blogs.  It is my cookbook and my daily motivational, inspirational source of quotable quotes.  It is my go-to place for celebrity gossip and stalking.  I couldn’t leave, even if I wanted to.

Many of those big Canadian bloggers I followed and then unfollowed have actually followed me now.

Twitter is what introduced me to the BlissDom Canada conference and Twitter is what convinced me to go.

Twitter also introduced me to all the talented folks YummyMummyClub.ca and my twitter relationship with them is no doubt a contributing factor to my recent hire there.

I’ve had to learn to understand that Twitter conversations last only one or two tweets, not paragraphs.

I’ve had Twitter conversations with so many interesting, intelligent and funny people, and I’ve been completely ignored by just as many.

I’ve had to learn to accept that for every 5 tweets, I may only get one response.

And I’m ok with that.  Most of the time.

It’s about the same response ratio as what I get at home…

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