Tag: Twitter

I’ve been using Twitter for some time now, both for personal and professional purposes.  When I was running my own business and operating as a freelancer, Twitter became an extension of my online identity and advertising; I used it to promote my business, show off work I’d done, and generally try to show myself to be a really clever bloke.  My personal Twitter account was more for family and friends.

Now, just recently I’ve not been all that active on Twitter or Facebook.  Life has just been too hectic, and having spent all day working at a computer actually the last thing on my mind when I get home is “right, I really need to sit in front of a computer for the rest of the evening”.  I’ve also had very little to say for myself, so even when I do find myself sat at a computer in the evening, I can rarely think of anything worthwhile to say.  The same goes for this blog, which hasn’t really been regularly updated in yonks.

A few days ago I was chatting to two of my best friends on Skype, catching up on stuff.  It was wonderful to see them both, and it reminded me just how much I miss them, and how irritating it is that Colchester is just so far away.  Whoever decided that 200 miles needed to be such a long distance clearly needs their head examined.  In fact, it occurred to me that Anne-Marie and Sarah are still my closest friends (apart from Ellie of course), despite the distance and the shameful lack of regular conversation.  We really ought to keep in touch more often.

And then it hit me – I’ve been doing Twitter all wrong.

For some time now I’ve been operating under the mantra that “no one wants to hear about what you had for breakfast”.  It’s been drilled into me that Twitter is meant for sharing important and useful information, and that you have to offer something unique and intellectually valuable for people to follow you and retweet your ideas.  Well, if the goal of your existence on Twitter is to attract clients and do business and generally be seen on Twitter as a minor celebrity, then yes, by all means, that’s exactly what you should do.  But that’s not me any more.  The only people interested in following me now are my friends and family.  I’m not interested in anyone else.  And I don’t have to prove my intelligence to my friends, they already know my foolishness, they don’t want to hear about the latest trends in website performance or PHP coding.  My Twitter followers are like Anne-Marie and Sarah, who want to hear about those mundane everyday moments that often get missed even in a Skype video call.  True, they may still not care what I had for breakfast, but there are other parts of my life that they will be interested in.

I’ve found my purpose again.  And hopefully, with that newfound confidence in my own online existence, you should hear more from me in future.  And if not, feel free to shout at me in the comments to tell me off.

I had decided well before it all kicked off (ahem) that I wouldn’t be watching the World Cup matches this year.  In fact, I could have told you that this time last year.  It’s not that I despise my country, it’s not that want to bring down popular culture, I just have absolutely no interest in football.  However, much to my disappointment, the footie is somewhat unavoidable.  It’s on the news.  It’s in my RSS feeds.  It’s being talked about in church during communion.  And it’s on Twitter.

On that note, I was mildly amused (and at the same time mildly annoyed) by a couple of friends giving a running commentary on Twitter as the most recent England match was being played.  I wondered who exactly those tweets were for the benefit of.  If I had actually been interested in the football, I would have been watching, and wouldn’t have needed the commentary.  As it is, I chose not to watch the football, because I’m not interested.  So you give me a running commentary anyway.  Is there no escape??

As it happens, my natural tendency to shun all popular sports stems from years of denial, conscious and sub-conscious decisions not to follow the crowd, and embarrassment.

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A while back my blog decided, in its infinite wisdom, that allowing access to the control panel was in fact not what I wanted to do, despite my many attempts to do so.  I would go to the login page, enter my details, hit the ‘go’ button, and be instantly redirected back to the login screen.  Helpful.  I did some digging around, and it appeared that as far as WordPress was concerned I was actually logged in, it just wouldn’t show me the control panel itself.  That meant I couldn’t approve or reject comments, I couldn’t add new posts, I couldn’t update the templates, I couldn’t add or remove any plugins, and I couldn’t spend time tinkering with my blog.  Maybe it thought it was doing me a favour.

In any case, it’s taken me until last night to resolve the matter.  I had previously tried copying new files across to upgrade to the latest version, but that didn’t work.  So last night I took a full backup of everything, deleted all the core files from the server, and uploaded a fresh load of files.  And as if by some deep and powerful magic, my command over my online presence was finally restored.  With that liberation still fresh, I jumped on the opportunity to make a few changes.

The most obvious change you’ll see is that I’m now importing my Twitter feed.  When I post a new tweet, it’ll get displayed here on my blog too, appearing like a little speech bubble.  This is actually a category in WordPress too, so I can non-Twitter mini-posts too.  Like for those times when I really feel the need to say something to the world, but Twitter doesn’t give me enough characters, and a full-on multi-paragraph post isn’t necessary.  Of course, I understand that you may not want my Twittering to come up in your RSS reader, so if you want to continue reading my blog by RSS but excluding these micro-posts you can now use this new RSS feed URL: www.minipix.co.uk/?feed=rss2&cat=-342.

Other changes I’m bringing in include a mobile-enabled view of my blog, so that you can read my posts from your phone.  I’ll hopefully also figure out a way of updating my blog from my mobile too, so that I can blog on the move.

I shall also be adding a new ‘Family’ category, as I seem to be writing an increasing amount about our son Samuel, and it feels appropriate to recognise his significance with his own category.

EDIT: If you’re seeing the Twitter micro-posts but they’re unformatted (i.e. not in funky speech bubbles) you probably need to refresh your browser to reload the stylesheet.  To refresh your browser, click the refresh button in the toolbar.  Or press F5.  Or press CTRL-R.  Or CMD-R if you’re on a Mac.  Or ALT-CTRL-SHIFT-TAB-R-X-N-SPACE if you happen to have that set up as a custom keyboard shortcut.

Here’s a confession – I’ve not been blogging as much recently as I should have been.  The reason?  Twitter.

I use my blog to tell people what I’ve been doing recently.  My readers are usually friends and family, unless a passer-by happens to stumble across something via Google that interests them.  My posts are generally about things I’m interested in, things I’ve done, things I meant to do but didn’t, or things that I want to rant about.

But now I’ve fallen in love with Twitter, my Twhirl client always running on my desktop, ready to accept my latest status update as and when I feel led to bend the world’s ear with my 140 characters of insight.  No logging in, no pressure to write unnecessary paragraphs of fluff, just a short blast of information.  No time like the present.  The result is that I feel like I’ve told the world what’s going on, despite the noticeable absence on my blog.  So I apologise that I’ve not posted more here in recent weeks.  Blame Twitter for being so darn addictive.

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This is a useful Twitter widget - repeats everything everyone else has said.

I’ve never been one for associating with the ‘in crowd’.  I’ve never been particularly interested in trends, fashions, fads or crazes.  Well, I say never… I do remember a time when I was at primary school when Teenage Mutant Hero Turtle action figures were the big thing, and I saw everyone else playing with them, and I pestered my Mum to buy me one, and she did, and the day I brought mine into school was the day they went out of fashion.  It’s scarred me for life.  Not that I’m bitter.

Fast forward a decade or so and I’m still in a similar mindset, though it has evolved slightly.  My approach now is to observe the trend from a distance, and then when it’s established itself and the hype has died down, then I jump on the bandwagon, and hope to goodness that I haven’t left it too late.  As a result, I have never bought a brand new Mac, I still haven’t got an iPhone, I joined Facebook to find most of my friends already there, and I gave SecondLife a spin a year or so too late.  And now it’s happened again.  I’m on Twitter.

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