Late last year, a friend of mine known on twitter as @josephsmith1986 told me about this new social networking phenomenon called twitter. Although I had heard of it before, I didn’t fully understand it, but under his reliable recommendation, I signed up to the service and began to ‘tweet’.
Well this lasted all of five minutes as I didn’t quite understand how to gain followers, or what the point was of following people I didn’t know, so I did what most people do when they start on twitter. I searched for a load of celebrities and started following their everyday lives. The problem with this though was that they were putting ‘@’, ‘RT’, ‘#’ in their posts, and I didn’t have a clue what any of these meant.
So I stopped using twitter almost immediately after I opened my account. Every so often I would log on to check out the celebs, but still I was unable to understand what the point was, and how anything that they were saying would relate to me. I was also having the issue that many of my friends weren’t on twitter, as we all use facebook, so how was I going to get any followers?
In January whilst at work, I was talking to @johnnythomson2 who had just signed up to twitter and was really enjoying using it. At this point, I thought why not give it another go and I started tweeting once again. I even managed to find a few of my mates who were on twitter, but like me they started, and then gave up. As much as I tried, I was finding it hard to use, and hard to get followers. After all, who would be interested in what I have to say?
Well inspiration came from the unlikeliest of sources. A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine, @sidler28, who is an aspiring sports journalist, started to blog. After reading his blogs, I remembered something that @josephsmith1986 had told me when he first mentioned twitter. He told me that if I wanted to get the full experience of twitter, I should write a blog aswell, as the two would compliment one another. And so, with @sidler28‘s inspiration, I created this blog, ‘The Life of Lev’.
Since I started blogging, I have found that my uses of twitter have increased. I have also noticed that a few more of my friends are using it, aswell as facebook, and so I have more people to follow, and am following more people. I am finding the experience both fun and interesting, and although I do not have many followers, I am hoping that the small group that are following me are appreciating my posts. I have also found that banter with mates on twitter is fun, as it feels like a text message, but one that your other mates can join in on.
Part of the problem I have found with twitter is for the average ‘joe public’ like myself. Because of the celebrity culture that we currently live in, people on twitter are more likely to followthose celebrities. And while their followers are getting greater by the thousands, the rest of us are having trouble building up a following. Whilst this annoyed me at first, I am now content knowing that although I may never reach hundreds, let alone thousands of followers, I am enjoying the little community that I have nonetheless.
