The best way to learn a new skill is to jump in with both feet and just give it a try! Or so I thought with some of the new technology that keeps flirting with my time.Not too very long ago I signed up with Twitter. Not a big deal, the sign up takes just a couple of minutes. I had one friend already on Twitter. From blogs I found a few more friends.
Then I discovered Tweet Catholic. From that list I found some really cool Catholics that I started following. One such guy, is Paul Camarata, his bio states, "A family man, neurosurgeon, and Catholic podcaster." He sounded way too cool, so I decided to follow him. He runs an amazing website, The Saint Cast, which has podcasts about the saints and a really awesome youtube video called "The Saint Song."
Once I started adding a bunch of folks from that list, many of them started following me! The busy rambling of everyone's Tweets looked incomprehensible at first. Then I began to see that some of them were responding to other's Tweets, signified by the @ at the beginning of the Tweet.
Not sure if anyone is actually reading your Tweets? I found out if you ask a question, you can often get an answer, to which the polite Tweeter responds with a "Thank you!"
Still, there are confusing combinations of letters and symbols, and I noticed the hash symbol, #, appearing quite frequently before the letters "tcot." What could that mean? Some secret language? I Tweeted and asked the question and was told it means "top conservatives on Twitter." They also have their own list, which I scanned for people I'd either heard of or people who sounded interesting. I preferred to find people with whom I had something in common, so I looked for those who listed "Catholic," "homeschooler," "stay at home mom," "humor," "veteran." I found some really interesting people there too!
I tried to resist the urge to follow tons of celebrities that I really had nothing in common with, though I did break down and follow Tony Hawk. Don't ask me why. I don't skateboard and none of my kids do either. I've never played any of his video games or worn any of his clothes. (Does he design clothes?) But when I read his bio: "...professional skateboarder, dad, videogame character, husband, ceo, kid chauffeur," I thought he sounded like a fun guy to follow. I especially liked the part about being a dad and kid chauffeur. Likewise, I followed the two creators of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, and Biz Stone, because I figured they could give me some hint of how this Twitter thing is really supposed to work. It still feels like speaking a foreign language to me.
From the tcot list, I found some interesting conservative celebrities, like Gov. Mike Huckabee, Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich, and Karl Rove. I felt a rush of adrenaline when Karl Rove started following MY updates. Heady stuff, this Twitter. I must've gotten a bit carried away with all the celebrity following, or perhaps I just thought it was a Pepsi logo, but I clicked on "Follow" Barack Obama. A couple hours later, I had second thoughts and decided to "unfollow" him, but only after BO had started following me! Hmmm...maybe he'll learn something from my pithy political commentary. (Dream on...)
I gotta go now...Pope Benedict is following me and he just asked what #tcot means.
You can follow my twitterings at http://twitter.com/militantmom.
