Twitter as Newspaper for 21st Century

I'm now a die-hard Twitter fan, after previously dissing it.  I think sometimes, I get impatient with the new "newness" of something.  I guess that comes with being 45 and a bit of an old grump about change.

Anyway, now I am regularly calling Twitter my "21st century newspaper" to those who wonder what on earth I'm doing with it.  I read the tweets every morning with my coffee and click on the links that I'm interested in, much like scanning the headlines in the newspaper.

I feel like I'm getting a good sense of the world, rather than just the US, by subscribing to tweets from Al Jazeera English, BBC and various Canadian outlets.  It also saves on the time it would take jumping from site to site.

I don't really care who follows and doesn't follow me - I don't find that Twitter always makes for a good chat with someone unless you both happen to be tweeting at the exact same moment.  Replies can often get buried, but I've noticed that I pick up on them a lot faster when I use my iPhone for Twitter.

Anyway, I'm tweeting a lot now and those silly little random thoughts are going out on Twitter rather than on the blog.   For my twitter page, simply click on the link on the right of this article.

No more Twitter for me...

You may have noticed I attempted to add a Twitter account, but I've deleted the account already. There were two problems that I discovered rather quickly. The answer to the question "What are you doing?" seemed too difficult for me to come up with, which demonstrates that this writer's block I've been experiencing is pretty deep rooted by now.

Also, I really got the account to follow "breaking news" kind of items and started following about 14 different accounts. Well, apparently, I did something wrong because all 14 accounts "disappeared" within 24 hours and it said I was following 0 accounts. I discovered that I didn't want to play yet another online game with the non-existent support staff at yet another website (Due to negative experiences with both Ebay and amazon.ca, I will never deal with either again).

Most of the time there are no problems with sites and they can go on automatically and rake in the money without actually having to work. For the few times there are problems the person who has the problem only gets automated responses (amazon.ca does this) and it is very difficult to get a person. When you do, finally, (after 10-20 emails) get a person, they simply continue to repeat what the automated responses say, no matter what. The people do not even attempt to think on their own, which is becoming a larger and larger problem with society as a whole.

Ebay committed the worst "sin" in my opinion. When you file a "grievance" (I never received the book I ordered despite repeated emails from the seller that he sent it), ebay automatically gives your PHONE NUMBER to the person you have a problem with. The guy calls me AT HOME from far, far away and wants to "solve" the problem over the phone!! I immediately stopped going to ebay after that. Within a few months the automatic emails stopped (it's not possible to "unsubscribe" apparently)

Well, these two experiences made me delete my twitter account. I've learned that if you have problems, that is the best way to deal with websites. Don't even attempt to contact them. There's no point.