To tweet or not to tweet

I ran a post back in April called "Why I don't tweet." I resisted Twitter for a long time.

My primary reason for not tweeting was:

Could my life possibly be interesting enough to warrant "tweets" every two hours with a maximum of 140 characters letting everyone know...well, nothing, really.

For me, the answer is a clear and resounding NO!!

(NOTE: if I am tweeting in 2 months, this post can and must be held against me...)

Well, that post can be held against me. You can find me at http://twitter.com/onejoey.

I first opened a Twitter account this summer because my pastor started tweeting and I wanted to follow him. I hardly used it for my own posts for a number of months. A few things have lead me to increasingly use Twitter.

1. I don't post updates every 2 hours and don't follow those who do. Like Facebook updates, it's pretty worthless if you waste your time with that.
2. It's a great way to follow the news. I subscribe to a few news sources that post headlines with links to their stories.
3. It's a great source of comic relief. I follow a few comedians who help brighten each day.
4. I get spiritual encouragement from my pastor and others who I respect.
5. Organizing those I follow into lists and using HootSuite has helped keep it simple and reduces potential for a lot of noise.

Those are the first 5 reasons that come to mind anyway. I do follow a few friends too and use it to a small extent as an alternative to Facebook status updates, but that's not the majority of my usage so far.

And I haven't started using it to drive traffic to my blog. Hmm...I may have to try that next.

I just have to make sure it doesn't turn into this: