Crotchety on Twitter: Part One

Today marks the end of my first week on Twitter. Frankly I don't know what to think. It's a lot to take in.

The basic idea is to find people (or entities) you want to follow. When you follow someone, his or her tweets show up on your timeline (like your wall on Facebook). As of this moment I'm following 107 including a bunch of different news outlets, quite a few celebrities, the literary agent of my dreams, a few friends, and several others related to my various hobbies and interests.

The trend list is one of the more interesting parts of Twitter. It shows the top eight to ten topics currently showing up in Tweets. You can check trends worldwide, by country, or pick from a list of the largest U.S. cities. Click on the topic to find out what people are saying.

Some of the trends are marked with a hash tag (#, what people my age call a pound sign). Many of these on the trend list are hash tag games. Right now #100FactsAboutMe (to use the proper Twitter terminology) is trending. Some of the games are downright offensive.

I definitely see things on Twitter before they show up other places--including television news, the blogs I follow, and Facebook. Elizabeth Taylor showed up on the trend list Wednesday morning. Before the news showed up anyplace else I found out she had died, that the Westboro Bigot Church planned to protest at her funeral, that she was 15 minutes late for her funeral, and that the Westboro Bigots didn't show up.

I didn't get on Twitter to be able to follow Dolly Partin and the like. My real purpose in joining Twitter is to get people to follow me. Next time I'll tell you how that's working for...

The Crotchety Old Man