Tweeting

I must be one of the last persons you would expect to find on Twitter, but there I am. The name is off-putting -- sounds like it's just for twits -- and what can you say in just 140 characters? But it turns out that it needn't be the time sink I feared, if you use it as a gateway or pointer to other more developed texts, images etc. It has already pointed me to some really intelligent sites on architecture and a whole bunch on literature, including Daniel Casey's Gently Read Literature, The Smoking Poet, and the odd but smart Speak Without Interruption, which bills itself as an antidote to the staccato brevity of Twitter and most of the other media we're exposed to. John Kremer gives lots of tips on "retweeting" and how to use Twitter to gather many thousands of "followers," which is not what I'm after, but he also has tips on book promotion which are worth following up. And he's smart about pointing to other sites.