LET THE TWEETing BEGIN!

After "reading" our four TWITTER-focused texts below, develop a list of THREE specific pros and THREE specific cons associated with Twitter, and then tell us a personal Twitter story in which you describe your own personal use of the technology (if you have a Twitter account) or any conversations you have had about Twitter with friends, colleagues, or acquaintances (if you do not).

CONS
1. It takes a great number of tweets to actually create a picture of what someone is like and how their personality is. This takes devotion and time just to be able to get a small idea of who a person is. “Again, Thompson instructs us to put up with thousands of idiotic and maddening tweets in order to "get" the full beauty and bounty of the site. Only after we burn swaths of our lives reading mindless tweets will the Twitter oracle reveal the wisdom it reserves for dedicated supplicants.” Alexander Zaitchik shows his displeasure with the phenomenon here, and tend to agree with part of his angry rant.
2. Personal intimacy is lost. Everyone knows what you are doing when you are on Twitter and privacy doesn’t really exist if your part of this network.
3. Friendships through social networking sites seem to be very superficial. Its tough to experience any real sense of emotion through a tweet and people that are following you can’t actually formulate accurate opinions on your posts. I suppose that you can put exclamation points throughout your messages, but in the end it is always better to call someone up and explain how your day went.
PROS
1. You can expand your network both professionally and personally. Those people that only use Facebook and Myspace are missing out on a new niche audience that expresses themselves through tweets.
2. It’s a fast way to learn tidbits about people that you admire or can’t exactly become in contact with. Many celebrities are tweeting and individuals like myself can follow them and comment on pictures or blogs they are promoting.
3. Twitter can be synced up easily with your phone so no matter where you are or what you’re doing, you can still be tweeting. Twitter is also an amazing way for industries like radio to promote themselves. The station I work for has a Twitter page where they update listeners on prize giveaways, upcoming shows, and new music.

My Twitter Experience: At work we constantly have Twitter up on our studio computer so we can stay updated with musicians that are posting information and we can continue posting information. I spend a lot of time at the station on the weekends and I’m responsible for keeping our Buzz listeners updated on what’s happening with us. Last week I posted a tweet saying that we were going to be giving away 311 tickets to their show and shortly after my post I received multiple phone calls into our hotline asking about the post. I am very surprised at the positive feedback we’ve received since becoming a part of the Twitter network. Many of our listeners are responding to our tweets and becoming more active with the radio station.