Twitter is Lame (With a Capital Tweet)

It's funny how a day unfolds. Yesterday morning I woke up with a plan. The plan unfolded reasonably well. Everything happened the way it was supposed to.

Then I had some down time.

Down time is not a bad thing, except when it leads to wasted time. So, at first I wasn't wasting time, since I was merely exploring the various avenues available on www.brucespringsteen.net, which happens to be one of the reasons the Internet is still around. Then I discovered the Boss had his own Twitter account. "Hmmm," I thought. "Maybe Twitter isn't as lame as I thought."

Since pretty much anything the Boss writes is profound and potentially life altering, I decided to check out the Boss's tweets (which, I know, sounds dirty). To my disappointment, http://twitter.com/springsteen offers little of true value, being nothing more than news updates and advertisements.

So much for working class wisdom in 140 characters or less.

Still, I became intrigued with Twitter. Although I am habitually long-winded, I liked the challenge in condensing my aimless musings down to something that could fit on the inside of a gum wrapper. After all, it worked great for the guy who came up with Bazooka Joe.

So, I set up a Twitter account.

Part of me was really excited about tweeting. I figured since no one reads my long blog posts anyway, shorter posts might attract more readers. A Low-Tech tweet might be my ticket to a loyal fan following.

I was wrong. As soon as I posted my first tweet, I expected to have at least twenty-five followers in fifteen minutes. No such luck. It has been at least an hour and a half since that first tweet, and I am yet to have one follower. Either my friends hate me, or they don't know I'm tweeting.

Gaining followers is not the only challenge Twitterers face, I've discovered. Despite what the makers of Laffy Taffy and fortune cookies might think, coming up with something funny or profound in 140 words is not as easy as it sounds. My first tweet was about reading Ovid on Sunday morning. My second tweet will be about how lame my first tweet was. My third tweet will probably be about taking a nap.

Chances are, my Twitter account won't survive a fortnight--or any kind of night, for that matter. Unless, of course, I get my twenty-five followers by Wednesday. Then it might last a month.

Tweet out.

http://twitter.com/lowtechworld