Ahh Twitter. It seems you can’t escape from it these days. Ashton Kutcher, the actor who has more twitter followers than anyone else at 1.3 million, likened the advent of the popular micro-blogging service to the invention of the telephone. It’s so revolutionary, Kutcher said, that someday the founders of Twitter will be mentioned in the same breath with Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel Morse, Marconi, and Tim Berners-Lee.
Someone should tell that to certain politicians and wannabe politicians in the Santa Clarita Valley who obviously just don’t get it.
Twitter is a difficult concept to explain but simple in practice. Basically you find people you like and you subscribe to their short 140 character messages. Almost 100 people follow my Twitter account, for instance, so they see whatever I post. I, in turn, follow almost 100 of my closest Tweeple as well, so I see a running list of what they’re posting in near real time.
Constant connectedness is the idea behind Twitter, and it can be a really useful tool if you use it correctly.
Unfortunately our clueless SCV political types just aren’t using it correctly.
Take City Councilwoman Marsha McLean. McLean has gone to the trouble of creating an Elect Marsha McLean 2010 Twitter account, but she has “protected” her posts from being read by anyone not approved by her.
Doh! The little lock means keep out of McLean's official election Tweets unless you ask her for permission
Then there’s Paul de la Cerda and Joe Messina, both of whom, I think, are running for the Hart School Board this fall. Like McLean, they don’t actually want the general public to follow their tweets, so they’ve locked us all out.
No no no, you're using it wrong!
In fairness to these protected Tweeple, I think I understand their confusion. Many people confuse Twitter with Instant Messaging or even email. You can address your Tweets to other twitter users, and you can even send private tweets for eyes-only delivery, but Twitter is not an email or Instant Messaging client. It’s more like a blog service and users should treat it as such: anything you post on Twitter can potentially be read by millions of people. If you want to keep it private, take it to email!
Dont’ got to the trouble of creating a Twitter account only to block the people who actually take the time to search for your feed and follow you.
And finally, we come to Dave Bossert, who took the opposite approach to protecting his Tweets. Rather than forbidding everyone from seeing his Twitter account, Bossert did the smart thing and just banned people he doesn’t like from seeing his posts. People like me.
I can't follow the crack reporting of Team WRB?
I post this not to mock these fine SCV citizens but just to encourage them to open up their Twitter feeds to all. Before you tweet, ask yourself, What Would Ashton Kutcher Do?
Thank you.