Should I really tweet?
My resolution for 2008 was to complete my Web 2.0 transformation, and I have done it. (Now I’ve got to find myself a new resolution for the 357 days left.) A couple weeks ago, I finally got myself an RSS feed reader, which I now use dozens of time a day. Then I put up my resume on every single career site out there, in the hopes of not becoming another unemployed graduate this May. Today, I reached the Holy Grail: I signed up for del.icio.us, Twitter and Digg. All in one morning. Now what do I do with them?
I found Twitter and del.icio.us terribly user-unfriendly when it came to adding people to my network. I couldn’t even import a vcard file. In Digg at least, I could, but it seems just two of my friends bother with Digg. I finally resorted to showing my Facebook friends in one tab, and typing their name in the Twitter search box in another. So old school. I gave up after half a dozen names. There’s got to be a better way.
Digg and del.icio.us, I get. I’m sure they’ll be part of my routine real soon. Twitter, I still have a hard time with. I have no desire to let everyone know where I am every second of the day. What do I do with it as a journalist? Please, techno-evangelists out there, convince me before this becomes another thing I signed up for a long time ago that clogs my junk mail inbox every so often.
Isabelle Roughol
I feel your pain with the glut of services, I just posted something similar on LinkedIn. I think the bottom line is to use services that better your life, not clutter it. For example, if your a media junkie you’ll love a feed reader. If you are the kind of person who just wants the headlines, a feed reader is not for you.
Count me in on that too. I did basically the same thing during winter break: Google Reader (which is better than sliced bread), Flickr, Twitter and del.icio.us. I joined LinkedIn and made a MyPoynter account before break–both are pretty low maintenance. I tweet on occasion, but I’m not a huge fan. Digg is probably what I’ll do next. I joined Publish2, but haven’t done anything with it yet. Wired Journalists is much better–that’s where I’ve been more often than the other journo-social networking sites.