I never had a MySpace account. I checked it out once and found it to be too juvenile for me. When my friends started exploring FaceBook and were raving about it I took a look and decided it was more my speed. I signed up for an account, created my profile, posted a picture and sent out some friend requests.

It wasn't long before I had reconnected with about 100 friends from high school. Funny, because I didn't realize I was all that popular in high school. I enjoyed catching up, sharing family photos and chatting with everyone. I even attended a mini reunion and met up for lunch with a couple of girlfriends a few times.

There were only a few apps out there at the time and sending a round of drinks to friends on a Friday night or giving a virtual hug to someone who needed it was kind of fun. But then it all started getting out of hand.

My timeline was clogged with things like quiz results (who is like what celeb, five favorite fast food places, who would you have at your dinner table) and games (Mafia Wars, Bling, Vampire Bites). Nice that FaceBook incorporated games you could play together into its' site, but I really did not want to see who was passing what poker chip, secret vaults or weapons to whom. I wanted to see what my friends were doing and pass valuable information.

I also wound up with a nasty little chat stalker who would immediately start up a chat session every time I signed in to check out my friends updates. I think he lived on FaceBook just to harass me when I showed up. It got so bad that I disabled chat.

A friend of mine from FaceBook kept talking about how cool Twitter was so I decided to check it out. I created the account and profile and then just sat looking at it. I was completely lost and had NO idea what I was to do next. I gave up and went back to the FaceBook frustration.

Then came the infamous battle to 1 million followers between CNN and Ashton Kutcher. I figured I would help Mr. Kutcher out with my two cents worth, so I logged into my abandoned Twitter account and followed him. I noticed that my account had picked up some followers, so I followed them too. Over the next few days I slowly started getting the hang of things. I watched who others were talking to and started following and to my delight some of them started following me back. I started sending @replies to people and they responded! I was hooked.

I worked very carefully to build the number of people following me by being sure I responded to anyone who sent me a tweet, by following back others when they followed me and by retweeting my new friends often if they had information to share.

Then one day I discovered something grand. Kirstie Alley was on Twitter. I'd been a fan of hers for years, since back in her Cheers days. Every time she was on TV doing those Pier 1 commercials I told my husband that it would be my dream to hang out with her for a day, that she would be so much fun. And just as I suspected, she is an incredibly fun person. It shows on Twitter. The day Kirstie sent me my first reply I literally almost fell off of the sofa.

After I started following her and watched who she chatted with, I started following some of those folks too. By doing that, I discovered some of my best friends on Twitter. Many of my friends and family do not understand how you can truly connect with and care about people over a social networking website. My only response to them is that they should not knock it before they try it.

Twitter is an excellent source of information also. Breaking news is tweeted regularly and I often find out about things happening in the world well before I can ever get to the TV or internet. People also tweet web links full of useful stuff.

So, to sum things up, for the ultimate in chat on steroids, interaction with folks you would not ever get to meet in real life and the best immediate source of information, Twitter wins over FaceBook for me hands down. Now, I know some of you have farms to attend to so I will quit my rant here. ;)

Thanks for reading!

Ellen
XOXO