Why I Like Twitter

I heard about twitter a few years ago and thought about signing up but didn’t because I figured, “I already have Facebook and I spend enough time online and what’s up the 140 ch. limit?”. Then Facebook got too big with old college friends, church people ;-), ex-girlfriends and I found myself with 600 friends.  Around the same time, some of my “like-minded” friends got on twitter and in a different way, my online community was restored.

Fast forward to today.  I’m still on twitter, though it’s hard to keep up.  For me, the solution has been not to bother keeping up.  I allow myself to not know all the tweets.  I suspect that  many healthy minded people already do this, but that mentality is new for me ;-)

I like Twitter for a number of reasons:

1. Microblogging is quick and efficient.

2. Already mentioned welcomed alternative to facebook

3. 140 characters is a great idea.  Especially since a lot of my friends are preachers.

4. Welcomed diversion to read an article/blog/etc. that some of my friends are reading now.

5. Keeping my friends a little more honest. I have always wondered if some of my friends are really as busy as they claim.  Turns out that some of them aren’t.  I have also always wondered if my life sucks. In comparison, it turns out that it doesn’t.  I am like a friggin rock star compared to some of these tweets and last night I gave my kid a bath, read a book and watched Sportscenter  (monotony takes on a whole new meaning).

6. Like most normal men, I am not that good at keeping in touch.  I try to call people when I’m in the car but twitter helps in a number of ways.  Like when I haven’t heard from a friend in a while, I can check some tweets and realize that he’s on a mission trip or she’s giving birth or this person is on a technology fast.  In all these cases, I send a sarcastic text message wishing them well.

Seriously it does help me keep in touch.  For instance, I miss my friend Todd Hiestand.  When I moved out of the Philly burbs and moved to the NYC burbs, I knew that it might as well have been Syria and New Zealand because this fool was never going to call/email/facebook me again which scared me a little, because I told him some of my deepest, darkest secrets. Thankfully twitter has kept some semblance of a friendship and so far, he has not used my love for 80’s bands as a sermon illustration (yeah I used to think Posion’s “Something to Believe In” was the best thing ever).

While I didn’t really want any church people following me because George Castanza is right, “Worlds would collide”, so far the ones that follow are the ones that I would want.

Aside from Scot McKnight, Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt, I haven’t bothered to follow celebrities.  I’ll turn on TMZ if I’m interested. In fact, I’ve tried to limit the number of people I follow and celebrities are currently among those filtered out.

I like that you can keep up with people you meet at conferences like Jake Bouma and Eric Ullestad.  I like that I met people like Matt Scott and Adam Wormann online and that I can keep in touch with the brilliance and wit of Daniel Kirk.  Want to stay ahead of the tech ministry curve – follow Adam Walker Cleaveland and Steve Knight.  They not only keep up with things but share.

And of course, who can get enough of Evan Curry, Thomas Turner and Tim Nye?  My intention is not to name-drop here but I don’t know how to talk about twitter without talking about people, that’s why so many like it.

In short, though it’s not an acceptable substitute for personal contact, I like that I can keep in touch, especially when circumstances prevent.  Twitter makes the world just a bit smaller.