It was not that long ago, that tweeting was something mostly associated with birds.  Now it is primarily used to type messages/blurbs on the internet.  I was curious about it and went to its website.  I couldn’t figure out why so many people did it.  I decided to do a search on how to tweet. There I found tutorials and guides for setting up an account.  It still didn’t make sense to me as to why people would want to do it.

I am a Facebook user and I love being able to connect with friends and family all over the world.  It has been great to pick up where I left off with people that I have not seen in person for a long time, sometimes years.  They post pictures of their kids and grandkids and I feel like I’m back in the loop of their lives.

With other friends and family that I cannot communicate with in person, I stay involved in their lives, even if only peripherally.  This is incredibly satisfying to me as I am a people person and I treasure relationships in my life.  I crave personal contact with people I like and love.

So, I asked someone, “Why do you use Twitter?”  One colleague told me that she primarily uses it to keep up on the news.  I do remember NPR and other media outlets referring listeners to check out their Twitter site as a way to keep up on all of their news stories.  I had forgotten about that.

Then I recalled a young woman I knew at church who did a workshop on hashtags and how to use them.  Hashtags are an important part of Twitter.  Obviously, I must not have understood how I might use them.  I didn’t pursue it any more after that, as you may have assumed by now.

Finally I turned to my computer’s search engine to ask questions, like “Why do people use Twitter?”  It is amazing how many articles have been written about this subject.  It turns out that there are many reasons people want to tweet, none of which interest me much.  It’s not that I feel superior to “tweeters” either.  I just don’t find that this medium suits me very well.  I’d rather blog.

So I guess I haven’t exactly proven anything other than the fact that tweeting is not for everyone.  I am just a generation or so out of that loop, so to speak.  It seems that for all intents and purposes, in my little corner of the world, tweeting is still mostly for the birds.