I've been pondering twitter, and an uber geek with a most impressive following (evidently) sent me this guide/plan to get started: http://www.twitip.com/make-a-tweet-plan-to-get-...

With that said, I still haven't gotten started . . .

Thanks Mary! That's a helpful link.

I left Twitter long ago because it made me feel isolated and alone. It's the transmission model of communication I'm trying to avoid, where I end up feeling more disconnected from people. There's no weight of words on Twitter. One minute, you could tell what you ate for breakfast, the next you could be saying a loved one has passed away. Most people, I found, won't search through the minutiae to find the important stuff, and you do yourself a disservice by trying to communicate this way - it simply isn't effective for the kind of connection I wanted. Most of the time, despite my friends and followers, I would tweet things that were important to me with no response from others. Talk about reinforcing the idea that no one is listening. I was typing into the void. At that point, I was also waiting for more of my friends to join, and I suppose the pain of being an early adopter made me leave even sooner. I wasn't forging better relationships with people I didn't know. I was more annoyed by my loose/weak ties than ever, wondering where my real friends were. Then I realized they were a phone call away, whereas no one I knew on Twitter was a close enough friend to warrant shared digits.

Of course all that to say, it may be different with a specific cause in mind, and I'm not against experimentation. But people speak so lovingly of Twitter, I feel it's really necessary to point out how alienating and bizarre it can be. People say things like, "We have to catch up with technology." Um, how about it serve what we're doing instead? I'm not here to compete with a machine.

b:
I think your comment about "there's no weight of words on Twitter" really sums up my concerns with it as well. I think that, as a culture, we're confusing mass amounts of information with intimacy. The optimist in me, though, hopes that as some mediums become more and more extremely tailored (to brevity and speed, like Twitter) that other, older forms will flourish for their own strengths (as a writer, I hope that means more respect for long-form journalism and books, because I don't think new web technology can ever substitute for them).

Whoa. Sorry for the lack of spacing.

Added! Welcome to Twitter!
I don't have any grand ideas about striking the balance, but I do agree that there's a need to reach out to both the mainstream and the activists. Information like what you provide here has the potential to create more activists and to change public opinion. (Except for in cases like this woman--"Many of the radical animal rights people are domestic terroists and should be monitored. They are more dangerous to our country than a few Arab-Americans"--who really doesn't like the Rescind the AETA idea Alex Hershaft posted on Change.org; this guy who thinks that "terrorist acts of animal rights activists" warrant the death penalty: http://www.change.org/ideas/view/death_penalty_... and this defender of animal research, who wants Obama to "Classify PeTA and ALF as domestic terrorists and eliminate them": http://www.change.org/ideas/view/classify_peta_...)
We have a looong way to go still.

Peanut butter on a bagel - why haven't I thought of this?

I have two thoughts about this - the more you can spread the word, the better. But personally I am so overwhelmed by the 8 million different blogs available out there I feel like I have about ten different personalities. I don't even remember all my passwords and user names at this point!

I see the importance of posting to lists that are NOT just animal-rights related, but I also think these blogs are important because I'm continually shocked by the number of activists I meet who don't grasp what's going on (politically speaking), who still freely joke about things that could be considered terrorism.

All I can say is you do a fantastic job, and if you can keep things straight in your head then go for it! :)

Wendy:

You make a really important point about the number of activists who don't know what's going on. That's something I'm trying to keep front and center in my head. I started this blog to reach a very wide audience, not just activists. To an extent, I think that has been succesful. It certainly has led to many, many speaking events at venues like bar associations and law schools. With the information overload you noted, though, it has got me thinking a lot more about audience. I think that's what is separating the blogs/websites/media that is succeeding right now from the rest: they really know their audience.

I haven't given up on taking these issues to a much wider audience, of course. That's still paramount. But my day-to-day priority is keeping you all informed. That may sound like a pretty silly revelation, but it really has helped focus my vision for all of this.

Anyone else have thoughts on trying to strike some kind of balance between the two? Between informing sympathetic activist types, and reaching non-activist (but potentially sympathetic) folks?