OMG, Twitter Was Down!!

Last Tuesday, it seems that Twitter had a bad hair day — and that most users were experiencing “issues” with the service, for some period of time.

Although I am not ashamed to admit that I use Twitter, I wonder how the truly “Twitter addicted” managed to survive the period when they could not “tweet”.

As a freelance writer trying to build an audience, each time I issue a new blog post (like this one) I also “tweet” the blog link out onto the Twitter system — hoping that some readers (who do not subscribe to my blog) will catch the topic, follow the link — and, hopefully, like what I write and subscribe to my blog. Just trying to build an audience, you see.

But to catch one of my tweets, you have to be quick — the number of tweets on the system is mind-numbing. I only “follow” 38 other people on Twitter, most of whom are political and technology columnists, plus a few friends and family (who tweet very seldom). Even with only a relatively few people to follow, I am amazed at the volume of tweets that appear on my screen each day. It is well nigh impossible to read each one.

Some of the columnists I follow seem to spend their entire day tweeting back and forth on issues, linking to published articles (often their own), and in general trying to promote themselves.

Of course, this is exactly what I am trying to do, and it is fair enough, I suppose. Otherwise, I have no idea how to let people know I am “out there”, save for the very occasional commentary piece I manage to sneak by an editor and get published.

To all of us trying to use Twitter in this way, I say best of luck. But I also note that Ivanka Trump has 1.5 million followers. That’s right, 1.5 million. I don’t even want to know how many people are following “The Bieb”. We aspiring serious writers are floating in a sea of pop culture prattle and pundit self-promotions, almost impossible to be heard.