Twitter, Twatter, Does It Really Matter?
Just 3 months ago, an acquaintance, at a business networking function, asked me, “Do you Twitter?” In true Toastmaster fashion, I replied, “Only when I drink too much caffeine!”
FACT: I didn’t know what she was talking about when she asked me about Twitter. In a true defense mechanism fashion: I delivered my humorous reply. Since this verbal exchange, I learned enough about Twitter to now, reply: “I don’t Twitter and with good reason!”
Unless, one of you will comment about the merits of Twitter and justify why I should become a card-carrying ‘Twitter-er’ I see no reason to invest precious time to become adept at using another useless, interruptive technology. I choose to avoid useless, time-intensive technologies which contribute little or nothing to my work day waking hours.
Abbreviated English ‘Text Messaging’ and ‘Twittering’ share the same appeal to me: None. Too often, I receive barely legible text messages laced with callous misspellings. Callous, because Spell-Checker is a built-in free program which only requires a sender to execute a few extra mouse-clicks.
There is no excuse for not taking a few extra minutes to Spell-Check my message before I transmit the contents. Why bother? Because each time I send an e-mail I am broadcasting how well or poorly I communicate. Like it or not, recipients will form an opinion about my educational credentials.
A speedy reply is no excuse for misspellings or abbreviated wording. Useless, interruptive technologies share the blame for these two alarming electronic communications trends. The second culprit is the decline in reading printed books. A habitual readership discipline enriches one’s vocabulary.
You only have to look at the lack of sentence structure to see we are becoming a society content to communicate in sound bytes rather than whole sentences which convey thoughts and meaning.
Laziness and acceptance are to blame! As long as the majority of readers condone sloppy word use, we are all doomed to mediocre prose. I say, enough, already. It’s time to re-focus and apply our God-given communications skills on what matters most: meaningful communications.
OK, it’s your turn Twitter Fans. Let’s see if you can communicate effectively!
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Comments
I like the work you’ve done on your site – are you having fun with it? It’s interesting and well worth the time to visit.
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I tend to disagree with much of what has been written in this post, but I am proud to live in a country where you can have your say and I can have mine.
I am tired of hearing that spelling is connected to intelligence. I have struggled with spelling my entire life yet I have an MA and 3 more years of study as a homeopath. I am an intelligent person. I have a handicap.
Twitter is no more useless than your blog. In many ways they are very much the same with the only major difference being brevity.
Twitter is about being connected to both people you know and people you don’t in a real time fashion. It’s about the exchange of information on any topic (religion and politics haven’t been tabooed).
Twitter would be a good add-on for your blog in that it gives people a non-email-based way to find out when you’ve updated it.
As you point out in your latest post, it is important to pay attention. You were lucky that you found out on the phone about her husband’s situation. But had she not told you on the phone you may have found out about it via Twitter, or Facebook or whatever social networking sites she is involved with.
Social e-channels of communication have been an overnight success for a reason and if you fail to educate yourself on the subject you are missing out on a substantial source of information and you alienate yourself from a large portion of our population neither of which would seem to be congruent with effective sales prospecting in the long term.
On a more pointed note, you seem to go out of your way to take a poke at a phenomenally popular activity without really knowing much about it. You specifically point out spelling errors while all of your posts I’ve read contain spelling, grammar and punctuation errors that range from accidental to uneducated.
Here’s a popular acronym you might want to look up- STFU n00b.
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