Editor's note

By Jessica Sain-Baird

Thursday, April 9, 2009

When I first heard about the website Twitter—a social-networking medium that allows users to update their statuses in 140-character-or-less messages—I thought it sounded like the most vain, self-centered social-networking website yet.

Then one of my professors devoted an entire lecture in our online media class to Twitter. Classmates eagerly opened their Web browsers and quickly clicked over to www.twitter.com to ironically update their statuses about class. If there were any time to be on Twitter during class, that was it.

It was after this lecture that I started to break down. I signed up for a Twitter.

After getting used to my Twitter account, it didn’t seem so bad anymore—Twitter was just a way to communicate ideas and post links to interesting articles and videos. Twitter was a way to be in touch with anyone on the planet you wouldn’t normally be in touch with—on any given day, I can probably tell you what avid Twitter users Lily Allen and Shaquille O’Neal are doing. Plus I hardly log on to Facebook anymore—short, to-the-point Twitter messages are a lot easier on the eyes, to say the least.

A few weeks later, when I found out I had been waitlisted for an internship with ASME, the American Society of Magazine Editors, for the summer, I turned to Twitter to see if anyone else who uses the social-networking website had been waitlisted, too. Streams of updates filled my iPod screen.

“ASME is seriously trying to torture me with the ‘standby’ list business.” “ASME put me on the standby list! Woohoo I’m not completely rejected yet!” “Finally heard from ASME, only to find out I’m on the standby list—meaning more waiting. Not fun.”

I updated my own status with a similar message, disappointed in the news but glad I had other magazine journalism students to share in my anxiety. I had become a true Twitter convert.

Read Madeline’s story on page 5 about the new phenomenon of Twitter, and how users around Lawrence have come to form their own monthly tweetups to meet each other in person.

And if you’ve been a Twitter user for quite some time, or become a user soon, log on and follow Jayplay’s very own Twitter account, jayplaymagazine. Who knows—the username may come in handy when you “tweet” about our story later.

 

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