Twitter Again

It's amazing how one's work can sometimes get co-opted by people who have such a strong point of view about something that it makes them blind to the actual words they read on the page.

This is the case, I feel, regarding the responses I've received lately to the recent blog post I penned about an event I attended last week at Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco.

I've received a deluge of anti-Twitter email congratulating me on taking a negative stance on the social media tool.

But the fact of the matter is that I did not set out to criticize Twitter the social networking tool in my blog post. What I was criticizing was the presentation I attended at Twitter, which was a total waste of time in terms of helping connect the arts world to social networking.

I actually think Twitter has a lot to offer as a tool. The tricky thing is figuring out how to get the most from it without feeling completely overwhelmed.

My advice to anyone who's feeling disgruntled with Twitter as a method of sharing ideas on the arts front is to find a friend or colleague who's comfortable with the technology, take them out for ice-cream and have them explain a few basic things about how to set up the tool to best serve your goals and strategize about using it in a way that feels unintimidating.

And despite my annoyance at Twitter for staging such a pointless event the other day, I am still looking forward to being invited to the company's HQ again in the near future (assuming I'm not disbarred for that last blogpost I wrote) and attending an event for the arts that's more thoughtfully organized. I hear that such a soiree is currently in the works.

Frankly, I can't wait, as I'm dying to know how to use Twitter better.