At some stage I will write about what I’m calling “my failure online”, but I already know I didn’t really fail and that thinking about it in such terms isn’t helpful.
I’ll come back to that later, but for now I wanted to mention my interest in Twitter.
As part of my previous endeavors online Twitter was a pleasure and a pain. It was a pleasure because I enjoyed the interaction – I notched up over 1800 tweets in a short space of time. That’s not some idle boast designed to impress you, it’s just a fact.
Twitter was a pain because it was so time consuming and unproductive.
It also left me feeling I needed to check it regularly so that I wouldn’t be ignoring anyone who’d tweeted me and in that way I got to feeling Twitter was starting to own me.
It felt bizarre that I’d be ignoring my own family so that I could exchange banter with strangers, so eventually I just stopped using it.
Strangely, even though I haven’t used the account in months, it weighs on my mind. I don’t like just hanging there in cyberspace.
To solve that problem I’ve deleted my account, and I feel better for it.
So having done that, it seems weird that I’d start a new account the day after I deleted the old one. But I have.
I don’t intend to use it in the same way I did before. I can’t see myself having Twitter on in the background as I used to do. It’s too much of a distraction.
I don’t know why but my gut feeling tells me I should have an account linked to this site, so that’s what I’ve done. For the moment, it’s just for decoration.
I hit the “follow 400 people button” when I signed up but I think that was probably a mistake now.
The account is @HowToFindHappy (because every other variation with the word happy or happiness has been taken, I wonder why?).
I’m going to monitor the account to see who’s following, but other than posting a few links I can’t see myself doing much more than weeding some of the 400 people I’ve followed in error.
Thanks
Andy
An Update:
As I mentioned I made the mistake of following over 400 “recommended” Twitter users and regretted it almost immediately. I started the long process of deleting them one by one and it was taking me forever.
Fortunately I found the site of Matt Singley who looks at social media optimization and his post detailing how to unfollow people on Twitter.
One of the two links on that page was to Twitter Karma and that’s the tool I used to unfollow all those people I’d followed in error. All the unwanted followers in one hit. I feel unburdened now.
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Thank you, Andy
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Hi Andy
I’m really enjoying the blog and your story so far…
This twitter thing is really interesting – what did you used to get out of it that you now feel you can do without?
I can see twiiter’s benefits from a marketing/research/customer service point of view but I never understood the “What I’m doing now” point of it – then again, I’m not very social (0 friends on Facebook!)
Keep up the good work and good luck with your journey.
Hadi
Hadi,
Thank you for the kind words. Much appreciated.
Your question is a great one and I want to answer it, but I want to give it a little thought first. So I’ll come back to it if that’s OK?
And your comment about facebook reminds me that I want to delete that account too. Now, what else can I lose while I’m in the mood???
Thanks again Hadi, I’ll get back to you with an answer shortly.
Andy
Hadi,
Thanks again for the question, it really got me thinking and I wrote a reply here:
Twitter Made Me Unhappy