In the space of 140 characters

I got an email yesterday asking me if I wouldn't mind describing what Twitter means to me, professionally, and if I could do this within one-hundred-and-forty-words...



And while ruminating on the answer to that, I thought about Alex Case's posts about online parties and Ask Auntie Web's description of me as a networking natural (which was like, the weirdest thing to read, like reading about someone else entirely)...

As I should really get down to setting up a schedule for this blog keeping Mondays or Tuesdays for lesson plans, suggestions and tech-tips, using Thursdays and Fridays for the longer pieces, workshops, the upcoming She-in-ELT series and teacher training issues, today it happens to be Sunday (my day for rants and other thought-pieces) so I'm musing about Twitter.

This is my theory:

Who you are on Twitter
is
Who you really are.

Not rocket science, I suppose.

In my comments on Alex's blog, I mentioned that deep down I'm kind of shy.

Yet, if I really get down to being self-reflectively honest then I suppose I have to admit that I'm not really that much, anymore.

As a child we moved around the world and I spent my teenage years in a boarding school, which had the result you'd anticipate: I spent most of my time reading and writing, saving stray dogs and in figuring out how to break into predefined cultural cliques... and when they didn't want me, how to simply entertain myself with my own mind.

Today, in my non-online life, I prefer quiet groups made up of sincere people who have interesting things to to say or share, not big on parties where I don't know others, love people who are interested in the same things that I am and people with their own personalities interested in things I'm not, surround myself with people who make me think, giggle or grow.

Today, in my online life, I still adore sincere people, faithfully follow links to tidbits of knowledge and also enjoy the warmth of developing international friendships with people who, in many cases, I now have more in common with than those I'm not online with.

But I've also been casually observing those I follow and have discovered that on Twitter, more so than on any other social-networking site, people simply reveal much more about their core personality within the space of those one-hundred-and-forty-characters.

I came up with a list:

• those who are funny people in real life, are hilarious within 140 characters.

• those that are arrogant, are impossible to tolerate.
  

• those who are mavens of information, abundantly link, abundantly share.

• those that are insecure and those who prefer themselves to all others, talk about themselves. And they are able to do this, consistently, within 140 characters.
  

• those who are sweet or gentle have hearts that literally jump off the screen at you.

• those that are antagonistic, start fights.

• those that are lonely show their need for love and attention without realizing we can see it.

• those that are afraid or nervous or brave or good or desperate or intelligent or warm or interesting, are.

• those who have nothing to say in real life, don't have anything to say there either.

• those with much to say, don't stop talking.

And those who are excessively long-winded, like me, have to write a blog about it.

One hundred and forty words?

I will have a hard time answering that email.

Useful links related to this posting:
-Join Twitter by Shelly Terrell on Burcu Akyol's EFL blog
-Twyths by Neal Chambers
-Twitter for teachers by Jason Renshaw
-The OMG-WTF spectrum

Best,
Karenne (a.k.a. @kalinagoenglish)