I think it’s about time I let you in on a little secret – Malcolm Turnbull, the Leader of the Opposition, asks my advice before every parliamentary question time.
It’s true. Who else but the Silvertail would take time out of his busy schedule to rack this reporter’s brain for ideas on how to grill Kevin Rudd and his government lackeys.
Welcome, gentle social media user, to the micro-blogging world of Twitter, where friends, colleagues and even politicians share and respond to each other’s thoughts, ideas and witticisms.
A new Twitter journey started just last week, when I finally dipped my toe into the Twitterverse after succumbing to the ever-deafening hype of ‘joining the conversation’.
Obviously I’m no trend spotter, but my raison d’etre was to quickly grab a spot on the latest social media bandwagon before it was too late and I was sent, like a leper, to MySpace.
Rapidly, I was made to feel like I had emerged from under a Facebook rock, with my eyes squinted and my hand held up to shield the glare from the light of Twitter.
How had I done without the ever-droll tweets of Chuck Klosterman? The hilariously irreverent thoughts of Sarah Silverman? The incredibly pithy words of Joe Hockey?
Whereas before I had labelled the website as vapid, narcissistic waffle, now all I saw was valuable, fascinating insight.
It became clear that I had been in denial about the power of the Twitter beast. Quickly I cannonballed myself into the deep end of real time news, celebrity gossip and frivolous chitchat.
All of a sudden I was hashtagging it with the best of them, following users that interested me and, most importantly, broadcasting my 140-character thoughts to the world.
Twitter’s community is growing at such a rate – 1382% in the past year according to Compete.com – that it won’t be long before it joins the goliaths of Facebook and MySpace atop the social media tree.
You’d better hurry up and snap your self out of that Twitter denial. Who knows, maybe the Honourable Member for Wentworth will want your thoughts too.
Tom Cowie is a final year Bachelor of Journalism student at La Trobe University.
You can follow Tom at #tom_cowie (http://twitter.com/tom_cowie), and upstart at #upstartmagazine (http:twitter.com/upstartmagazine)
