What are you doing? I’m writing about Twitter

I finally bit the bullet and signed up for a Twitter account. If you have never heard of Twitter before, it can be best described by the verbiage on the main page of the Twitter web site:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

If this doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, you are not alone. In fact, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either. Hence the reason it has taken me so long to try it.

But try it, I did

After signing up for my new account and linking to a few friends’ accounts, I was presented with the imfamous “What are you doing?” box on Twitter. I thought long and hard about what I should put for my first entry. I even thought about putting “Trying to think of how to answer the what are you doing question.” but eventually decided against that.

After a few minutes I came up with “Heading out to teach a class on selecting a cell phone that’s right for you.” Later that day I added another entry, “On my way to help restore a client’s Internet connection.”

As you can see, I’ve decided to take a business approach to my use of Twitter. I could very well have put, “eating a bowl of oatmeal” or “staring out the window” but I wasn’t quite sure the world was ready for that level of intimacy with me.

So is there a role for noobies on Twitter? I really doubt it. I can’t imagine that people who are already struggling to grasp the onslaught of technology released every day are going to have time to log in to Twitter or send a text message to Twitter from their cell phone (yes, you can do that) to tell their friends, family and co-workers what they are doing at any given moment.

Will you follow me?

I can however, see how a noobie may want to create an account to follow someone else. Follow is the term Twitter uses when you want to receive updates every time someone else answers the “what are you doing?” question. I could see families using this to keep tabs on other family members or distant relatives.

I could also see how it could be beneficial from a learning standpoint. If I continue to update my Twitter account with the kinds of things I do every day, perhaps my clients who want to follow me could learn something they didn’t know before. For example, if I say “Helping a client purchase a new laptop”, some of my followers may be surprised to discover that helping people purchase new laptops is something Noobie does.

So for now I will continue to use my Twitter account in the interest of exploring its possibilities. If you are interested in following me along my journey, feel free to sign up for your own Twitter account and look for mrnoobie, that’s me!