Throughout the presentation, participants were encouraged to 'tweet' with the three professionals' usernames on a PowerPoint slide on the board, along with a hashtag to add to each post. I would say that the main point of the presentation was to stay involved with social media, because you will always be ahead of the game if you do so. As a result, multiple people at the presentation went home and made a Twitter. I have always had an account to follow organizations, but made the life decision to partake in tweeting. America, be prepared.
I also made a LinkedIn page, Wordpress professional blog to revise over the next couple of months as a resume-type page, and am in the processing of updating this page to stay socially savvy and "in-touch" with the world.
But can one stay "in-touch" with what's going on on Earth if they are focused on the small quotes, tidbits and continuous happenings of the internet? Can they observe and appreciate the small things in life and outdoors when they're focusing on their tweets?
One thing I like about Twitter, but realize is pathetic about our society, is that you share your continuous thought-stream with America. This is both a positive and a negative. It's positive to use this social media as means to benefit organizations, our culture, businesses and more...but the more I tweet, the more I see it as an outlet to release your life and feelings to something that doesn't exist and people that don't care.
When I think of something I tweet, it's a thought that you either are too lazy to verbally or face-to-face share with someone else, or something that you hope the rest of the Twitter-world and world wide web will think is amusing, unique or clever. Your mommy, daddy, best friend, significant other or friends don't care about what you have to say....so tell your so-called social network of connections. One of them might care or think it's funny.
As someone that strongly values talking on the phone with people, Skyping and keeping in touch with friends, I find this disappointing. If it's really something that important to you, whoever you call to tell or share the story with (or in Twitter...out of context to sound more awesome in the 140 characters you have to share) will listen and acknowledge your feelings. You don't have to feel forced to share your recurring thoughts to the rest of society, but we do because it's conformity. It's what everyone else is doing, how everyone else is getting jobs and connections, so to be in touch with reality....we must do it too.
My question at the end of this presentation is where to draw the line between tweeting and networking in the professional world. What if the CEO of a large organization, elementary school teacher or the founder of a sentimental non-profit swears in a tweet...do we lose respect for them or acknowledge that they are real people with real thoughts too? On Facebook we don't, we fire them for having inappropriate photos and more. But on Twitter, it's just your thought stream so it's okay? This mindset confuses me.
As I tweet (you can see my thoughts on the sidebar of this screen), I hope you understand that I am always hear to listen. Call me if you want to talk. If I care about you, you most likely have my phone number...and if you don't....maybe you will receive a shout-out in the near future because you follow my blog and I don't know who you are and that scares me. Sometimes, I do tweet with the mindset of "Nobody else would care what I have to say right now so I'll just post this to the internet." Hopefully, the rest of humans doing this today DO have someone to listen to them in life, because in reality...I think legitimate friends and non-internet connections are someone's support system moreso than the comfort of their computer, keyboard, Blackberry or iPhone.
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