The first two posts I made about uses of Twitter were definitely focused on a more practical, professional value propositions. Accessing thought leadership quickly as well as using Twitter to find great web content are useful (in fact, I got my first pingback today on the great web content post).
We are working really hard these days. With a depressed economy (still) we are asked to do more with less again and again. Hours are long and emotions can sometimes get the best of us. Moments of levity during the day can be really helpful to manage our stress, and Twitter can deliver those effectively without impacting our productivity much at all.
For me, I tend to follow a few pretty interesting personalities from pop culture as well as certain professional athletes. Besides being interested in their particular fields, my criteria for electing to follow is that they tweet fairly frequently. Some of the people I follow include Rainn Wilson (@rainnwilson — Dwight from “The Office”), Conan O’Brien (@ConanOBrien) and the basketball star Shaquille O’Neal (@THE_REAL_SHAQ). A word of caution, however, is in order here. There are a number of Twitter users that are impersonating famous people. Twitter has a “Verified Account” feature now, so we can be sure that the person is who they say they are on their homepage. I include a snip from Conan’s page to illustrate. My favorite tweeter is @sh&*mydadsays (yes, I replaced a few characters). It’s a young man (28 years old or thereabout) who lives with his parents and he writes down what his dad says. It it enormously popular with over 1.2 million followers. It’s a little vulgar, but I think it is popular because it’s SO close to home with many people.
Conan's Twitter Page
So, lighten up. Take a couple of minutes and follow some people on Twitter just for fun. You’ll pick up some great conversation starters for the lunchtime conversation in the cafeteria.
