How to use Twitter (and whether to bother)

David Murray tried Twitter so you don’t have to. But after reading his gonzo account, you might want to tweet, yourself

Like you, I don’t have time to try every new social media application that comes down the pike; when it comes to new stuff, here’s how I vet it: I hear about it from Shel Holtz, then wait until I see evidence that Holtz is actually using the technology in his own life.

Then I wait one year, and check it out for myself.

That’s how I vetted Second Life, how I vetted blogs and podcasts before that—boy, Shel and I are getting old—it’s how I came grudgingly to agree that the World Wide Web offered some potential as a communication medium.

Twitter was no different except I may have waited a little longer than usual to make my dive into Twitter, which I finally did last Friday.

I was pretty skeptical.

After all, wasn’t it just a few years ago that every white-collar worker in the world was grouching bitterly about the impossible volume of e-mail? Weren’t we just reading those made-up think-tank statistics—500 useless e-mails per person per day costing the nation $4 trillion in lost productivity per minute?