My first ever tweet was a 1:08 PM on 22nd May 2009 - it simply said "Edtech". I must have been at an EdTech Conference where delegates were using Twitter as a back channel for discussion. I joined in. Since then I have tweeted 6,292 times, I follow 1,690 accounts, and have 1,514 followers. I find Twitter is a great learning tool and in the past had often just watched for tweets with interesting links to follow up. However, in the past year or so I have been using Twitter less and less. I hardly ever tweet anymore - in fact most of my recent tweets are auto-generated ones from my blog posts. I use Facebook more - though it's a bit rubbish, too many feckin' cat and dog videos!
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| Image source: Stargazer's World. |
Stephen Fry in leaving Twitter earlier this year posted on his website that "Too many people have peed in the pool", he longed for the early days when Twitter was fun and a "secret bathing-pool in a magical glade in an enchanted forest". Now he writes that "the pool is stagnant" and refers to it as "frothy with scum, clogged with weeds and littered with broken glass, sharp rocks and slimy rubbish". A relieved Fry is happy that he is "free, free at last". Of course he has got a hard time from a lot of people who see Twitter as a way to attack him - he is a controversial person (whom I admire greatly), and arguably did a lot for Twitter in this part of the world.
I won't leave Twitter (just yet) but I'm wondering about the value of staying a member of this social media tool. Sometimes when I'm bored I check it out, but for the most part I am not really following any of the 1,690 accounts. Without Stephen Fry, Twitter has just become a lot less interesting.
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