You Twitter, you brought her.

bird-shit-in-hair I’ve always considered myself ahead of the curve when it comes to technology. We had an Atari 2600 and a Betamax when I was growing up. My first laptop had a ‘c’ after the product code to indicate that the monitor was color. More recently, I have proudly used ‘google’ as a verb and have tried to settle petty arguments through the comments I leave on various film blogs. So, you know, I GET IT.

However, there is one area where I have not been on the cutting edge and that is Twitter. This didn’t really bother me until I was asked to start contributing to this site. Since Schad recently started a Twitter account, I wasn’t sure if it was something I’d have to know about. So I clicked on over to Twitter HQ to try and wrap my head around this innovative new service… After the jump, part one of my handy guide to not having a Twitter account yet.

If you are like me, you’re insecure about being a late-comer to Twitter and so you imagine it to be a fairly ridiculous enterprise. And you’d be right.

The sign-up page features three testimonial quotes that are as follows:

“Twitter is the first thing on the web that I’ve been excited about in ages.” – Jason Kottke, Blogger (thanks blogger!)

“Twitter is the telegraph system of Web 2.0.” – Nicholas Carr, Author and Technologist (I feel like this is not exactly an endorsement)

“It’s almost like ESP” – Wired (almost…)

Wow, where do I sign up? Oh, on this page… but can’t I sample the goods first? Turns out you can! Just click on the ‘search’ link.

Hmmm, I read somewhere in a dead media platform that Ashton Kutcher uses Twitter alot. I’ll just search his name! For a fair sampling, here’s every third entry from the search results page:

lloydfassett: @aplusk, Ashton Kutcher, with 1m+ followers sent an Amber Alert 44 minutes ago (cool!), 3 yr old S CA blond boy

justajew: @aplusk WHAT’S UP ASHTON KUTCHER? i loved you in that 70s show

Gfu1126: finally understands that RT=retweet. thanks ashton kutcher for enlightening me.

cjohnsongt: I’m getting close to blocking the Ashton Kutcher posts…We don’t need updates every 5 minutes Kelso

CitizensideFR: Katherine Heigl et Ashton Kutcher au tournage de “5 killers”: Katherine Heigl déjeune avec des amis et sa mère à.. http://tinyurl.com/dejcvm

The dead media platform was right! That 70′s Show star Ashton Kutcher IS a big Twitter user I guess. But the big discovery here are the links to the Twitter users themselves! Just click on @aplusk and you’ll get a taste of what it’s like to follow the real Ashton Kutcher. For instance, what did he ‘retweet’ to justajew’s question? Hmmm, don’t see a response yet… maybe he’s taken cjohnsongt’s comments to heart. So meta.
I know what you’re saying. You’re saying “But I’m not a huge Ashton Kutcher fan.” Don’t worry, there’s more than ten-thousand people tweeting (including Fred Durst).

In part two of my journey, I will still not have a Twitter account but I’ll figure out a workaround with my RSS feed reader so I can sort of fake follow people. I’ll also make fun of more entries but I’ll have to update the ones I cut and pasted from the site because LeVar Burton shouting out his own Family Guy guest spot feels dated now.

This post was written by Connor Kalista
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 10:10 am. It is filed under 100% Filler, Technology and tagged with . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.