Has The Whale Jumped the Shark?
I joined Twitter in the summer of 2007. I was an early user, so early that I actually got my name "ophelia". I played with it for a while, lost interest and went onto other networking sites. Then in 2008, I rediscovered it and went back and "tweeted" from dawn to dusk. I have met the most inspiring people on Twitter and those relationships have passed from online to offline.
It was fun, I made new contacts, got the latest news, got in on the closed betas; I loved the low level of noise on my desktop because I felt connected, since I work from home. I even downloaded the Adobe Air based application called Twhirl to have Twitter on my desktop with realtime streaming of all the tweets. Even when the famous "fail whale"* appeared because of technical difficulties I was patient, like a person who kept using a beloved appliance that only ran if you held it on a 30Ë? angle while shaking your left leg.
Then the mass media got a hold of Twitter. That spelled the end for me. Once I started hearing on MSNBC, CNN, even my local plumber telling me that they all have Twitter accounts and to follow them, I knew my sweet little world was upended like a rolled over log. Now the outside world had invaded my safe little world of "real people" and was putting up 140 character billboards over my Twitter pages. Even if I didn't follow them, they appeared in my stream courtesy of other Twitter users that I followed.
Imagine having a conversation with a friend and in the middle, a stranger would pop their head in and tell you to buy a low flush toilet to be green, and then disappear, all the while your friend is speaking to you. Not only did my head explode, I was unable to stem the flood washing over the flimsy barriers I had put up; a popsicle stick dam is useless against a tsunami.
I still "tweet", but only once a day to say Good Morning. I dragged Twhirl to the trash and emptied it, a bit of melancholy but with no regrets. It was like saying good bye to a good friend that became an overnight pop star with a posse fueled on Red Bull and low fat Frozen Yogurt. I was exhausted from separating the wheat from the chaff.
I have to go now, I have to go check my Facebook updates.
"I've been tweeting about the pork barrel..." Sen. John McCain
CNN on Twitter
Al Gore on Twitter
MSNBCon Twitter
Illustration: Ophelia Chong with a nod to the original illustrator of the Fail Whale, designer Yiying Lu.
Footnotes:
*Fail Whale: When Twitter crashes during technical difficulties, you are redirected to a page with a cute blue whale. Twitterers came up with the name "Fail Whale".
