Finally Joining Twitter

So I finally joined Twitter last week. You can follow me at gailcarmichael.

I actually avoided Twitter for the longest time. I already had Facebook, and many friends imported their Twitter feeds into their Facebook statuses anyway. I definitely wasn't interested in learning about all the mundane details of anyone's life, which is what I'd heard Twitter was like. Besides, who needs another website to refresh obsessively throughout the work day?

I finally caved when I noticed that some of my Facebook friends weren't really updating as much as they used to. More importantly, these friends were colleagues from various adventures in school and work, and so a part of my professional network. I started to feel like I was missing out on conversations that I shouldn't be missing. Finally taking a look at their Twitter profiles confirmed this.

I'm not sure how much I like Twitter so far. I definitely don't dislike it, but 140 characters is more limiting than I expected it to be. Plus, now I have duplicates between the Twitter page and my Facebook news feed.

But it's probably worth it, since I'll be less likely to miss out on interesting opportunities. Already I found that a colleague from university, who had a new start-up going, needed someone to redesign their website. I passed this on to a friend with his own web business, and he was very appreciative. You never know what will come next. I will soon try to find some more people to follow in relation to my research areas.

How do you use Twitter? Did your use of it taper off after time? Do you feel like you would have missed something important if you weren't using it?