Let me just say this so I can get it out there and out of my chest where it’s probably looking for a way to kill me: I don’t like it that I have to say I “follow” someone on Twitter. I’m a leader, dammit. I lead. I also don’t like saying “tweet” because I’m freakin’ 31 years old.
I like Twitter, though. It’s useful and fascinating and has lots of potential. I don’t follow a whole lot of people, not because I’m too proud to say I follow people (which I am), but because digging through all the contacts I’ve made there to find more contacts is pretty time consuming, and between work, grad school, and a pregnant wife, it’s kind of hard to find time for American Idol, My Name Is Earl, and No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain, much less cherry-picking who I’ll admit to following.
Current “Following” count: 176
Current number of “Followers”: 77
I like it that I have followers. Makes me feel like a cult leader.
Because of how time-consuming finding new people to follow (gag) can be, I also like the idea behind this new Twitter app, cleverly and disappointingly dubbed “Twubble” – I know, right?
The Twubble app, which I’ll be trying out later, is said to automate the process of finding interesting, relevant, or essential people to follow by examining all the people you follow for you and producing common follower-trends. The results are ranked according to how many of your followers and followees are following someone else. Follow, follow, follow. See, all that following really sucks, doesn’t it?
This could be useful for people like this guy, who follows over 42,000 people, and I don’t want to begin to understand how much time he spent developing that list. I suggested to my colleague David Utter that that could be the most pathetic loserish thing I’d ever heard. Hasn’t this guy ever heard of girls, beer and sunlight?
Utter responded: Meh, he looks 20-something. It’s an age thing.
Sigh, I hate it when Utter’s right. Thanks for making me feel old. Maybe we can get together later and dial a rotary phone. You know, for old times’ sake.
Utter’s 40, by the way.
Now, can we quit with the baby and pretty birds and sheep words for our cool new web stuff? I haven’t been this annoyed since the development of LEET, LOL Cats, and everything started receiving a 2.0 suffix.
Oh yeah, and since I couldn’t remember where to put my dots in del.icio.us.
