Twitter, Tweeting, Tweets, Tweetworks...

When Gee told my class that we were required to create (and actively use) a Twitter account for a grade, I laughed a little to myself. Twitter for a grade? I neve even liked the idea of Twitter. To me, it seemed like a bunch of celebrity obsessed people getting on it to "follow" their favorite celebs as if they were part of the celebrity world by doing so. Needless to say, I did NOT have Twitter account before Gee's class.

I made the account and sort of wondered how this would be useful in the working world. I have seen news blips about Twitter being the next big thing in companies, but I honestly thought it was probably a fad. All I had ever heard about Twitter was about celebrities' tweets and that it was pretty much Facebook status updates. How could knowing what someone was doing ALL the time possibly be useful to me?

Once I became familar with Twitter, I saw how it CAN be a useful networking tool. I don't follow any celebrities, and my status updates are usually something a little worth while. I'll post links to CNN articles or what's going on around campus. I get updates from MUTribune, CNN, JodiPicoultFans, LSUbuzz, BNN (Breaking news now), etc. I've chosen to limit who can folllow me and what they can see. I don't care about what a celebrity, or their publicist rather, is doing during the day so I choose to follow sites that interest me. Some of the tweets I follow have postings for jobs, tips on building resumes and what do after graduation. These things can be useful, and as silly as it may sound -tweeting back to these tweets could help post my resume and score an interview.

I also didn't think that Twitter was as important in the corporate world as Gee had made it sound. I figured some companies, depending on their target audience, used Twitter but that it wasn't that big of deal. PRSSA's first meeting dealt with "What's the Real World Really Like?" and we got to hear from three different speakers. One of the speakers, Megan Fischer, mentioned that she screens people's Twitter and Facebook and that she uses Twitter multiple times a day not for personal use - but for her company. The amount of times she refrenced Twitter was kind of shocking, but then I realized that Gee was right, this IS PR for the 21st century.