I have been signed up for some time, but can’t bring myself to tell people I’m doing laundry or I’m in class, again. Good news is I have 1 follower, Raquel. She thinks I’m still studying. There are some great uses that I see for Twitter including travel updates (when access permits) and group activities, as well as news and emergency messages like earthquakes in China. And Ellen used it for a contest - she tweeted for people to show up at a specific location with a 6-pack and an ID, and the first student to arrive won a trip…those people are glad they were following her tweets.

You may enjoy this Fox News article on twitter in business, that a friend just sent me:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,518481,00.html

I think it takes a lot of time and devotion to commit to a Blog and people these days would rarely take time to read through someone’s blog, but following people on twitter is easy and doesn’t take that much time… I love it!

And sorry guys, I haven’t fallen in love with twitter yet. It seems just like the “status update” feature on Facebook, in which only your approved friends can see what you’re writing.

Am I missing something? I have the NYTimes and WSJ on my iPhone, so any news on Twitter seems to be redundant. Is the point that tweets can move faster than news crews?

1. I originally signed up as a means to inform my family and friends about my travels in Chindia. This wasn’t well thought out because I don’t have internet access as I walk the Great Wall of China or shop at the Pearl Market. Also, I think the whole concept of this, even domestically, would be much helped if I had a phone with internet. All those iPhone users - have at it. I quit. I have Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, two emails, blah blah… maybe this fragmented industry needs a little consolidation. I’ll wait for my moment to strike.

2. This whole status concept is horrible! Think of all the perfect opportunities for someone to take advantage of you!

For example:
Twitter Update #1: “Off to San Francisco for the weekend! Ciao peeps!”

-Response: you come home to your house trashed because you link your Twitter to your Facebook, which has your address and robbers decided to jack that Apple laptop and your Sony big screen tv. And don’t even look for it… your Tivo is gone, too.

Twitter Update #2: “Uptown Cafe in 20… anyone need to study calc??”

-Response: Billy Bob, that creepy guy from your calculus class waited all day for you to visit Uptown Cafe like you said you would and he’s confused how that update wasn’t his direct invitation to meet you there… this is the fourth time he’s shown up somewhere and now you’re thinking about calling the cops.

Twitter Update #3: “Join me down by the river at noon for some koolaide and cookies!”

-Response: your followers have become so enamored with your charismatic twitting that they convene at the river to drink Flavor Aid and you’ve just found yourself to be the next Jim Jones.

I know that I’m being pretty ridiculous, but it does scare me to some degree. We have become so needy for constant attention and Twitter has merely set up another avenue to fulfill that greed. I can understand its benefits from a business standpoint - you have to keep up with the millennia generation going 80 seconds a minute, but from a personal perspective, maybe we should have invented a site that reminds us to slow down every few minutes.

http://twitter.com/chinagolf
http://china-golf.us

Gorgeous place…

Also Pitchengine.com is a perfect example of a business that leveraged PR folks on twitter and releases on Twitter to build a biz now being looked at by venture folks and takeover companies…

L

Twitter still finds its way into major media streams too: From the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion section, Williams and Stone: The Twitter Revolution. Now, how do I tweet a resume?

That said, I have toyed with it a bit and think it’s pretty cool. My general experience is also that when you ask someone in the US what Twitter is, you still get a lot of blank stares. In China, much less so — they Chinese seem to relish new technologies like this, especially their younger crowd, and this is one reason some firms set up portions of their R&D there.

What Twitter means for the future in business, I don’t know. But I would predict that even more cool business opportunities will come out of it to pursue.

For example, I just watched the vid Lonnie put up, hilarious! In common tweet format:

This describes Twitterers to the tee! RT @lonniehodge Here’s a video I came across that basically describes the whole process - you may enjoy it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN2HAroA12w

(where RT means Re-Tweet, kind of like forwarding an e-mail, and I’ve referenced Lonnie with @lonniehodge, his twitter name so people know the source)

This is all good and well, but for Chinese news, we are relegated to English tweets. We rely on those expats who are living in China to tell us what is going on from their own biased perspective. It’s better to follow tweets from people who understand both cultures (hence they are acting as a bridge, an important foundation in US-China relationships) @kaiserkuo (he gave a presentation to the 2008 MBA trip) is one such person. Want to see the real, RAW China? Follow a twitterer who speaks in Chinese. But, I can’t say that you’ll understand it all, especially with the slang being rampant, but that’s how our sources will be if we want to hear it directly from the horse’s mouth.