This is going to threaten to be a “Look ma, I moved to Hollywood and met a celebrity” post, but I think there’s something a little more profound on this one. I first heard about Twitter back at PodCamp Boston in late 2006, didn’t understand it, went home and signed up for it anyway, but never actually tried it out. I kept meaning to but it always got lost in the shuffle, and frankly, my inability to grasp what it was based on the way it was being explained to me didn’t help.
Fast forward nine months and I’d moved to Los Angeles, survived covering the iPhone launch, gotten through Lollapalooza and I was finally ready to try Twitter, though still with no real reason to believe that it would be useful or interesting to me beyond the fact that so many people I respect seemed to be getting something out of it. Although having internet access on the iPhone did allow Twitter to make a little more sense to me in theory; if I only had access to it while sitting at the computer, how many of my “What am I doing now?” posts would end up being interesting? I’m doing stuff when I’m away from the computer, not in front of it. But with the iPhone, I now had 24/7 internet access and could post at any time. So about a month ago I took the plunge and started posting.
Not that I knew what I was doing, I was just doing it. The only guideline you’re given is that any post you make has to be no more than 140 characters, and the most common analogy people use to describe it is that it’s one big instant messaging conversation, with each person only seeing the posts from the people they want to see. When I started out on Facebook back in March, most of my friends and acquaintances in the podcasting and new media community weren’t yet on there, and I didn’t know who I was supposed to be looking for. But now with Twitter I had a basis for finding people to follow (starting with my Facebook friends), and then of course exploring who they’re following to see if I want to also follow any of those people.
Many of the people I started following did the same in return, and after I started posting a link to my Twitter page both on my blog and on select iProng articles, I began getting notifications that some of my readers were now following me. I went through quite a bit of trial and error when it came to who I should be following, whether I should automatically start following people who were following me, whether I should continue following people who weren’t following me, and so on. I’ve decided that it comes down to a case by case basis; the one constant is that having met someone in real life seems to make following their posts much more interesting.
But I’ve found some interesting exceptions. Simply knowing of someone can make their posts interesting, particularly if what they have to say is actually, you know, interesting. I found that one of my friends was following wliw, which turned out to be Wil Wheaton. I did in fact watch every episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation while growing up, but my reason for wanting to follow Wil on Twitter had less to do with the fact that he played Wesley Crusher and more to do with the fact that he’s known to be an Apple geek, or at least a geek who uses Apple products.
I don’t think Wil has posted anything about Apple in the time I’ve been following him, but I did notice a post from him this evening saying that he would be signing his new Star Trek book this evening at a comic book store down the street from where I live. I’m not a comic book person, but I thought you know, when am I going to get this opportunity again? So I headed on down to the store, and sure enough, Wil and his three co-authors were sitting there at a table. Thanks to the fact that I got there way early, no one else was there yet but them and me. I grabbed a copy of the book, took it up for them to sign it, and since there was no one waiting in line behind me, ended up getting into an extended conversation with them.
Wil was intrigued when I said that I showed up solely based on seeing his Twitter post, saying it was the first time he’d posted something on Twitter and had someone show up as a result (in hindsight I’m not sure whether he meant it was the first time he’d posted something like that or the first time someone had shown up). This led to a conversation about Twitter itself, along with Facebook, Apple, iTunes, iPods, podcasting, and all that other stuff that reminds me that I’m a little more of a geek than I like to admit. Here’s the fun part: each of the four of them took turns signing the book, the illustrator first, who drew a very accurate-looking Starship Enterprise next to his signature. The next signer, who was an author and not an illustrator, drew a decent-looking Klingon ship firing on the Enterprise. Then Wil drew a Star Wars ship, complete with an “I don’t belong here” caption. Then the last author drew the Tardis police box from Doctor Who.
After I’d taken up more than enough of everyone’s time (about fifteen minutes I think, but hey, there was still no one else there waiting behind me), I headed home, and I did what you’re supposed to do: I twittered about it. And in what I believe is the most useful part of the Twitter experience, people responded about it. Jason Tucker, whose OC Podcasters group gave me crap at their meetup last week for meeting one too many celebrities, cursed at me. Paul Kent, who’s met Wil Wheaton through his role in Macworld Expo, shared his own experiences. You get the idea.
For every totally inane post on Twitter that must have somehow seemed interesting to the person typing it at the time (I’m as guilty at this as anyone), I find just as much interesting, even intriguing sometimes, content. The fact that it’s essentially a series of one-line posts makes it easily digestible, easy to skip past the less interesting stuff when there isn’t the time, and easy to find the gems. But just as importantly, it’s a sure-fire way to know that the person who just posted something is at their keyboard and focused on Twitter – in other words, available for the moment. If you have a quick question for that person, here’s your chance to ask in a manner that is both A) in real-time, and B) almost certain not to interrupt them from something else they’re doing. That’s a rare combination that you don’t find in too many other forms of communication.
“Going to Meltdown in Hollywood for Manga signing. Sunset, between LaBrea and Fairfax, if you’re in town. 8-10pm” is what allowed me to have a real-life fifteen minute conversation with Wil Wheaton and his friends. Sure, I’ve got another picture of me with a celebrity to send back home, but it’s the conversation we had about Apple stuff and social media that I’ll be chewing on this evening, not the fact that I met another celeb. The criteria I use to evaluate celebrity meetups is this: if the celeb had just been an anonymous nobody, would what they said have still been interesting to me? The answer was yes when it came to my interview with Rudolf from the Scorpions yesterday, and it was yes again when it came to Wil Wheaton today.
Don’t go sign up for Twitter thinking that it’ll allow you to find out where celebs are going to be and when so you can go meet them. That’s not the point at all, and I doubt it’ll work anyway; this evening was a fluke. But remove the “celebs” part from that last sentence and replace it with “local friends” or just “interesting people in general” and you’re getting closer. And it’s a beautifully lightweight way to stay in touch with those far-away friends and acquaintances you know you’ll only see in real life a few times a year. I haven’t been on Twitter long enough to get a full feel for it, and yet I can tell already that it’s not for everyone. If there’s no one you want to follow you’ll be staring at a blank page, and if there’s no one who wants to follow you then you’ll just be talking to yourself in written form.
But Twitter is indeed for me. I already figured that out before today, but the Wil Wheaton thing just crystallized it.
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