I remember the day like it was yesterday, though I guess it was much earlier than that. I had finally decided to see what all the Twitter fuss was about, so reluctantly, I logged on to the still up-and-coming Web site, created a username based on my endearing nick name and on-air DJ Handle - Skip D. - and unleashed this gem:
SKIPPYD'S FIRST TWEET
skippyd: tired as hell. early morning meeting. no power. no shower. mad brick outside. headlights - "get your head around it." 2008-11-18 12:35:29
(via My First Tweet, which compiles every Twitter user's very first tweet.)
There it was. November 18, 2008. I didn't know how to tweet, I didn't have any followers, and I thought I was being cool by saying that it was "mad brick outside." (For the record, that's supposed to mean it's cold.) I updated Twitter sporadically for a few weeks while I was slowly building a list of people to follow (mostly sports writers and news organizations) and trying to convert my skeptic friends to give the site a shot. Clearly, my tweets were still a work in progress. But as more and more people joined the conversation as time went on, I became hooked. There was no going back.
Flash forward to a year and three months - and 1,290 tweets - later, and it's hard to imagine how I ever lived without Twitter. What I once thought was just a glorified domain for Facebook statuses has transformed the way I think about spreading and receiving information, conducting conversation and hell, even living life sometimes.
I'm glad we're making Twitter a big chunk of the J198 curriculum. It's perhaps the most important development for journalism since the advent of the Internet, and the earlier our journo-generation learns how to use it for its good, the easier it will be for our kind to adapt to the new media world. As someone who's a mere few months away from graduating and actively looking for a journalism job, I feel confident that my social networking understanding and experience will separate me from those who are less inclined with these new tools.
I'm sure I'll have a whole lot more to say about Twitter as the semester goes on, but in the meantime, I look forward to tweeting with you guys and the LV community. Also, I've embedded my Twitter feed on the blog (on the sidebar) to spice things up around here. #twittermadness
Flash forward to a year and three months - and 1,290 tweets - later, and it's hard to imagine how I ever lived without Twitter. What I once thought was just a glorified domain for Facebook statuses has transformed the way I think about spreading and receiving information, conducting conversation and hell, even living life sometimes.
I'm glad we're making Twitter a big chunk of the J198 curriculum. It's perhaps the most important development for journalism since the advent of the Internet, and the earlier our journo-generation learns how to use it for its good, the easier it will be for our kind to adapt to the new media world. As someone who's a mere few months away from graduating and actively looking for a journalism job, I feel confident that my social networking understanding and experience will separate me from those who are less inclined with these new tools.
I'm sure I'll have a whole lot more to say about Twitter as the semester goes on, but in the meantime, I look forward to tweeting with you guys and the LV community. Also, I've embedded my Twitter feed on the blog (on the sidebar) to spice things up around here. #twittermadness
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