Twitter: A middle-aged person’s conundrum

I’m one of those people who, until recently, adamantly refused to use my phone for anything other than making phone calls. I know, I know, I may as well pull my pants up to my armpits and complain about the government full-time.

My best friend Jan often insists we are NOT middle-aged. Usually I smile benignly when she says this, but one of these days I’m going to inqure, “We’re pushing forty. Do the math. How long were YOU planning to live?”

I think my generation often straddles the fence between embracing new technologies and staring helplessly at them, murmuring “too many buttons…too many features…” So I don’t have a Smartphone, but apparently I NEED an iPhone…or I’m a total failure as a marketer.

Because according to the clamouring marketing authorities: if you’re not Tweeting, you’re nothing.

All righty then, but before committing myself to another high-price purchase based purely on hype (I’m looking at YOU, iPod; my generic MP3 player and I laugh at you and make rude gestures in your general direction), I went to the Twitter website from my desktop. I poked around with the features, read some random tweets and – tada! - created an account and…I be Tweetin’ Miss Daisy!

Then I needed followers/to follow, so I searched for my friends.

I was somewhat surprised and stymied when I found that virtually no one I know has a Twitter account.

After searching for hours, here are the people I’m following:
- My ex-husband
- William Shatner
- Sockington the Cat (because I met Jason Scott at Casecamp a couple of weeks ago and he was one of my favourite speakers)
- Will Wheaton (although I thinking of un-following him because he Tweets every ten minutes and it’s exhausting)
- A couple of agencies who tweet to send out job prospects (a viable use! Yay!)

Hey, where are my friends and family? Maybe I was doing something wrong? So I asked around. The answers were pretty much consistent (complete with emotional responses):
- I have better things to do with my time (affronted).
- Twitter is for junior high school girls (derisive).
- I don’t care what Ashton Kutchner is doing right now (superior)

But every marketing article I’ve read in months insists that Twitter is utterly crucial! I stomped my little foot. What’s wrong with my friends? Why do they not have a Twitter strategy?

Perhaps the answer lies for now in demographics. My social network is made up of largely unlikely Twitter users. My contact lists are filled with people with scandalous professions such as banking and insurance, where being in constant contact the latest trends in social networking are less important than say, picking up their dry cleaning. It’s would be too time-consuming at this point for me to dump them and get all new friends. So…

Twitter. Is it a vital tool or a useless ball of nothing? My mental hand hovered over the DELETE button…

But then I remembered Facebook. Cast my mind back two years ago, when everyone was learning about this crazy little social network and I recall my peers’ whining:
"Now I have to log onto Facebook AND email account to retrieve my messages?"
"Right, so I’ve re-connected to all my elementary and camp friends… now what?"
"I don’t care what all these people are doing - where’s my wall???"

But they learned. Oh, they learned. Now you can't have a decent conversation with someone in a restaurant without them taking time check out their aunts' latest pics of her cat. Facebook in Toronto is bigger than Jeebas.

So, Twitter? Speaking on behalf of cost-concious, fad-resistant middle-aged Canadian women… the jury is still out. Do something productive or you’re cut off!

I’m sure Twitter is so scared.