Twitter

So I started a Twitter account today. Not that I am popular enough to necessitate a twitter account but why not. It is on the news every 5 seconds and everybody and their dog has one. The news the last week or so has done nothing but talk about twitter, tweeting, and everything else buzzing around about it. When they mentioned that even Oprah Winfrey and Larry King had a twitter, I figured I better check out what all this bloody "tweeting" is about then.

The first thing they have when you go to the site are links to click about "how" and "why" twitter is around, how to actually use it, and a clever little video with paper cut-outs (I am not kidding) showing you how this system works. The next thing I did was click on "blog" down at the bottom (http://blog.twitter.com/). I figured it would just lead me to something about how to make a blog or link your blog on twitter, but, the results were interesting.

The other night on Larry King Live (http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/larry.king.live/), Ashton Kutcher and P.-Diddy were on talking about which of them had more followers and some twitter contest to be more popular by getting 1-million followers. Throughout the interview portions that I saw, they made no reference to why they were having the contest, so it wasn't clear to me what exactly it was all about. It turns out, by clicking on "blog" at the bottom of twitter it takes you to a page explaining the contest. It was not just celebrities going on about how awesome they are because they can get the most "tweets" and prove how wonderful their lives are compared to the average joe.

The reason for their contest was to support and raise money for the organization Malaria No More. The contest was to see who would be the 1st to 1-million followers on Twitter between CNN and Ashton Kutcher. The winner was to donate what ended up being $100,000 to a noble cause. Well, I think you can guess who won (Ashton Kutcher). I couldn't believe Mr. Demi Moore was actually using his craziness and silliness to make the world a better place. No wonder CNN was part of this crazy popularity contest!! In the end, Ashton Kutcher donated the $100,000 he promised, CNN still donated $100,000 (despite not being as popular as Mr. Demi Moore), and many other celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey donated large sums of money to Malaria No More which will provide mosquito nets to help prevent the spread of this terrible disease.

I think it's great that we can use these social networking sites like http://twitter.com/, http://facebook.com/, and http://myspace.com/ to try to make a difference. Don't get me wrong, I love these places and go to them all the time to check in with friends and family, which is great in and of itself, but to hear that celebrities are using their cult-like status on these sites to change the world is just fantastic!!

To check out the video either go to http://blog.twitter.com/ or to You Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZADez_MIr5I. You can also find it by searching for "Twitter and World Malaria Day" on the You Tube search engine. To check out Malaria No More you can click on the link above, this one http://www.malarianomore.org/index.php, or the one listed on my links of some excellent causes.

So keep on tweeting, blogging, networking, and making the world a better place!
And so it goes...