Officially a Twit

I joined Twitter.

I know, I know, I've been resisting its Twitterific allure for a while now, but yesterday, in a fit of procrastination, I decided I wanted to follow people, dammit. So that's what I'm doing. Giving in to my stalker-ish tendencies. This seems a much healthier outlet for my author-groupie impulses than, say, lurking outside their houses. Gena Showalter will tell me when she has new books coming out! Because she wants me to know. Cuz I'm special like that. Me and all two thousand of the rest of her followers.

I don't know if I will tweet much, as I am a long-winded type person and doubt I will ever have anything worthwhile to say that can be said in 140 characters or less. But I might occasionally tweet some less-than-worthwhile things... so if you wanna follow me here's the link: http://twitter.com/ViviAndrews

What do you think of the various and sundry social media? I have a feeling, now that I've signed up for Twitter, that everyone will suddenly shift over to some other new site. I will still blog (because my Narcissism is hungry and must be fed!) but it's possible facebook will suffer from even worse neglect if I really get into the TweetVerse.

I heard about this study (and now I wish I remembered where I read about it, cuz it would be awesome to cite it here, wouldn't it?) talking about teens and social media. How parents were all worried that their kids weren't socializing "normally" since they were always hooked into their iPhones and whatnot. So, apparently, this study found that kids who were linked up to various sites actually had more developed social skills than those who weren't. I found it really interesting, because you always hear about technology distancing people, rather than bringing them together in meaningful human ways.

Like anything, you get out of it what you put in, and adults may have a very different experience than kids who are raised with that as the norm. I don't know. I think, when it comes to social media, as with most things, the important thing is to not demonize them or blame the technology. It's neutral. Inanimate. It isn't out to destroy our lives, but it will only enrich your life if you use it that way. It's all in what you bring to the table.

And I've devolved into preachy pablum. Ugh.

Moral of the story: I've joined Twitter. Consider this a fact-finding mission. I will report back in a couple months with details as to my success or lack thereof in my quest for domination of the TweetVerse. Rah.