Twitter is the new tool in my 2.0 trunk that is getting me more involved online. My husband, one of those people who was online when it expensive as hell to have a home connection (and almost unheard of) when there wasn’t much to do online beyond text based newsgroups, often says to my question “Who is that?”, “Oh a friend I know from channel so-and-so.” (aka, a guy he knows from an online chat room.) For a long time, I really didn’t understand that. I mean, I understood the logistics of logging on and chatting with familiar faces, but I didn’t really understand how trust and friendship could evolve between people who were essentially strangers.
As a librarian, I often refer people seeking support and information to these resources for the purpose of interaction, yet I have preferred to remain uninvolved myself. By uninvolved, I really mean that I have not formed relationships and I have not networked. Not on Sparkpeople.com- the social weight loss and fitness site I log into regularly, not on Facebook or MySpace, not on LastFM, not even on blogs I read religiously. I’m like an invisible, anonymous, online wallflower.
Until recently, my online habits really consisted of the occasional comment on a blog, posts to list-servs, plotting my own online identity, and communicating with my colleagues and friends. Yes, it is quite easy to be 2.0 with just your friends or even just yourself. Even as I write this, I wonder if I’m the only one who will read it.
Well, as it happens, Twitter has allowed me to seek out, introduce myself (by way of "Following" and a direct message) and get to know people from around the globe. Not that I’m not still being a wallflower elsewhere, but I am having fun and widening my cyber social circle one tweet at a time. And I finally understand how my husband can really call his online acquaintances friends.
