Media Meditation #2: To tweet or not to tweet?

The answer to this question is difficult. But I have found a compromise.

The twitter logo that I have tried so hard to avoid.

From twitter.com

Recently through my Media and Society class, I have been bombarded with twitter. And I must admit, the only thing that has been stopping me from playing twitter is my preconception (or misconception, depending on if you think my preconceptions are untrue) of it.

In my mind, twitter and facebook are both excellent tools in mass communication. The only problem is that most people don't use it to its full potential. Here is what I used to think twitter was:

Yes, before I used twitter, it was just an annoying tool for people who demanded attention, spouting useless little details about their daily lives. It certainly did not help that commercials such as these were popping up on TV:

"Cool it with the twitter updates."

"I'm sitting... on the patio..."

That Verizon commercial was what I thought of twitter in a nutshell. And before twitter, I had the roughly the same attitude towards facebook. Until now.

A friend of mine once mentioned TweetDeck, in fact, he probably learnt about TweetDeck from the same class I'm taking now. Since it was about twitter, I quickly disregarded what my friend said about TweetDeck. However, after watching my professor play with it on the projector screen in class, I realized the potential of twitter.

TweetDeck - What made twitter make sense all of a sudden.

From www.tweetdeck.com

You see, TweetDeck's organization allows for twitter's potential to be realized. Twitter itself is the embodiment of the trends we are experiencing. First and foremost, it is convergent media at work - where information from different sources, different technology and in different forms merge at one point. There is a plethora of information that we can observe simply looking through tweets (minus the boring, small details of life that no one really cares about). Useful tweets are passing on information that few people know of, making it available for whoever it is that seeks that type of knowledge.

Secondly, tweets embody how participative our technology is today. While it is true that you can use tweets to tell everyone what kind of sandwich you eat for lunch, it is even better if you choose to tweet about events that you know of, or first hand news that you have heard of.

Twitter is a representation of how information, especially information found or shared on the internet, can be organized and categorized. This organization is another step in the right direction for modern media, and should definitely be taken note of by everyone.