I joined Facebook about six months ago. It is an interesting social networking site that can sometimes be a bit addicting. It has been great to reconnect with old friends from high school, as well as keeping in touch and up to date with friends and family. I find the status updates the most intriguing part of the site. They range from poetic, cryptic, silly, to boring, annoying, and puzzling. It can be more revealing that one realizes. Which is why it has me thinking about Twitter.

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates or “tweets” which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). This is a riff off of the status updates on Facebook: think only text updates and that you can follow people that are not your “friends” you can also be only a receiver or a follower. Twitter has been in the news quite often lately, especially in the arena of journalism.

I am considering opening a Twitter account to see what all the fuss is about. I am really intrigued from a social networking and communications stand point. I love the idea of new forms of communication and how it affects you. This is a strange conflict between becoming closer knit as a community while at the same time desensitizing yourself through constant barrages of information. I’ll let you know if I decide to take the plunge.