Saturday, August 29, 2015

What's In A Tweet, Anyway?

I held out for so long.  Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it has never been MY strong suit -- and I don't really have time to waste on yet another social media platform.  So I have completely ignored Twitter and "tweeting" up to this point and know very little about it other than the nasty Donald Trump tweets that made headlines recently.  But Son the Eldest, who is on Parental Technology Probation and is temporarily banned from social media, informed me that his AP Psychology teacher tweets hints for her daily reading quizzes, letting students on Twitter know ahead of time what one of the five quiz questions will be.  So I have jumped down the rabbit hole into the weird alternate universe of the little blue Tweetie Bird in the interest of my son's academic success. 
Bizarrely, when I first attempted to create a new Twitter account USING MY OWN GMAIL ADDRESS, I was informed that someone named Stogner Obola, located in Indonesia, already had created a Twitter account for that email address.  For MY email address.  What?!!  I had them send a password reset to my email address, and then I was able to get into this Stogner person's account, which was suspended by Twitter for spam activity.  Uh-huh.  I changed the password, user name, and all the settings and information but I'm still kind of weirded out by it.  I've had that gmail account since 2009 and I don't think it has ever been compromised, and I have never received any emails from Twitter that I remember.  I don't know how someone could have created the account in the first place without being able to access and confirm my email account.  Whatever -- it's been reclaimed, and they are not getting into it again.
 
So now that I have this Twitter account, I would like to know whether there is any potential value in it for me.  Should I just follow the AP Psychology teacher so I can pass the quiz hints along to my son and leave it at that, or is there anything in Twitter for me?  Do any of you use Twitter, and if so, what for? 

8 comments:

Karen - Quilts...etc. said...

I do not tweet and I do not do instagram - but now this is just my opinion but it seems like the teacher is giving unfair advantage to students who use social media - what about the kids that do not have smart phones or are limited in their use of social media because the parents do not want them on the phone and computer so much -- something about that just doesn't sit right with me for some reason. Maybe I am just too old fashioned?
I have been tempted to set up a instagram account as so many quilters seem to use it now, but yet I don't want to be sucked into the rabbit hole even further - I am on the computer off and on all day long and the smart phone as well - constantly checking blogs and email & facebook -- like I don't have anything better to do with my time.

Fred and/or Marlies said...

Like my verbose daughter-in-law, whose blog this is, I too can't stop my words from flowing out faster than a 140 word pot can permit. Whenever I write a letter to the editor, where a 200 word limit exists, I wind up trimming 500 words down to where I'm not really saying too much. Maybe that's the point. I guess that's why I've never written a tweet. On the other hand, FB is where I live.

Lainee said...

I can't think of many people in this world that I would want to know what they're thinking 24/7...#keepittoyourself

Barbara Sindlinger said...

Most of the people I follow on twitter I also follow on instagram or facebook and they usually post the same things so I don't go to twitter very often.

Fred and/or Marlies said...

I just adjusted my blogger profile so that Rebecca can respond to my comments. Try it Rebecca. I misspoke above with 140 words. It's really 140 characters, right?

Fred and/or Marlies said...

I misspoke. That's really only 140 characters instead of words, right?

Jenny K. Lyon said...

I don't get Twitter, just don't get why I need it. I would do it if I saw value. I am very active on FB so not sure what Twitter would add for me.

Lara B. said...

Oh Rebecca, that is creepily upsetting about the spammer having your email address. It sounds like you cleared it all up though.
It strikes me as possibly unfair that your son's teacher would use that platform.
I do have a Twitter but hardly ever have time for it. It's linked to my Bloglovin' account, so all my blog posts automatically show up on Twitter. This has the effect of making me look a bit self centered, LOL, since I hardly ever actually go on Twitter and retweet anyone else's stuff.
To each their own though. Explore it a few times and then decide if you like the platform.