Twitter

Twitter's like a playground; there are games and there are fights, there are weird discussions and there are boring ones.

Twitter's like an assylum for the mentally ill; every day, over two million people talk to themselves, feeling an urge to tell the world (or whoever's listening) that they are there, and they are busy!

Twitter's like Hollywood; there are celebrities, there are creations, there are good deeds done and lots of pretentious attitudes about everyone else (side note: people on Twitter are both the celebrities and the people observing them, and pretentious attitudes, creations, good and bad deeds are all done by both sides of the coin of fame) and you're not likely to know everyone who has some interest in what you have to say.

That pretty much summarises my experience with Twitter in the 51 and a half weeks I've been there. I've see the fights first hand, and I'm not at liberty to discuss them. They're sort of a You-Had-To-Be-There thing, because even though they're broadcast publicly, they're private intimate things. But I've see the games too - they call them "hashtags." Things are tagged with, can you guess, the hash sign (# for those who don't know...). Generally the hashtags are used to get things trending and to identify similar tweets (that's Twitter lingo for what other social networking sites call "Status Updates."). Other times, they're used to spread jokes (for example: #threewordsaftersex)

As to the assylum reference... well, we're all guilty of that on Twitter. Especially me. I spent about an hour yesterday tweeting in the third person, just for the fun of it.

And Hollywood... well, I've seen friends gain a celebrity status (okay, one in particular), but I've also experienced something similar to the celebrity thing... I don't know most of my followers. It's kind of weird. I would have thought they would reply a lot more to the things I say, but no. Just out of the blue, on Writer Wednesday of course, a couple of people I don't know have me down as a recommendation. I don't know where that came from (but I appreciate it!).

Twitter's like a billboard for the masses; something can be advertised on it, and people can ignore it if they want.

Yeah, this comes back to Poetry Against Cancer. I'm sorry to say (if it annoys you that is... otherwise I'm not sorry), but I won't be stopping with the posts about this book for a long time. I want it to sell, and so I have no choice but to talk about it to remind you, again, that it's for a good cause, and we could do with every say.

My copies of it arrived today, by the way. I have twenty-five copies of it with me right now as I write this. And they look amazing! I mean, I knew they would, but I was still delighted with how well they came out. Rachel did a fantastic job on design work, and I'm not the only one to say it. Now, if you wish to buy it, you can click on the link (the name is hightlighted above - it's a link to buy it, like all the links of books I post, though most go to Amazon.com)

Thanks for your time. Let me know what you think of the book if you buy it! (And please, buy it! I don't ask for much, and it's not too expensive!)