Should Rural TeleCommentary Join Twitter?

As a 20-something young adult whose BlackBerry is actually starting to fuse to the skin on hand and who has usually been considered an "early adopter" of technology and applications for many years, it is with some embarrassment that I admit that I do not use Twitter nor have I ever really even checked it out. However, I have been mulling over starting a Twitter feed for Rural TeleCommentary, to complement the blog itself (not substitute or compete with it). You may have noticed from some of my previous posts, I really like to write...a lot...sometimes too much even (at least according to a handfull of graduate school professors who live and die by enforcing page limits to projects). I am well aware that readers' attention spans for things like blogs and online news are very short, but with my highly specialized subject matter and educated audience, I have faith in my readers to spend an entire 15-20 minutes reading a whole article of 3-5 paragraphs without being dazzled midway through by something shiny and distracting on the Internet. Thus, Twitter has never really appealed to me because I usually have a lot more to say than can fit in 140 characters. So, if I start a Twitter feed, it will be primarily to alert followers of new blog posts as well as to quickly communicate important telecom news or recommend other articles, books, blogs, etc. I am also interested in establishing more two-way communication with my readers, which Twitter may (or may not--I honestly don't know) help facilitate.

I opened a poll which can be found under the headline banner and above my bio to the right of the screen. The question is: Would You Follow Rural TeleCommentary on Twitter? Please take a second (literally, it will take one second) to vote. The poll will be open for 2 months, during which I will study the idea further and try to figure out if it is worthy of my time or not. According to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, 40% of Twitter posts are "pointless babble," which is primarily why I have never invested much effort into this platform for social, educational, professional or entertainment purposes. But--I'm hoping to change my attitude towards it because clearly Twitter is becoming an important (and necessary) tool for businesses and news sources especially. It might be fun, and it might be a good learning experience for me, but I am hesitant to start it unless I actually have committed readers lined up in advance--so please vote!

If any of my readers have experience with Twitter that they would like to share--please share it! If you have any ideas about how I could take advantage of Twitter for the benefit of my audience, please share that as well!

Cassandra Heyne
ruraltelecommentary@gmail.com

Edit 4/3/2011: I removed the Twitter poll because it was causing anomalies in my traffic statistics (not a big deal, but it was bothering me). If you have an opinion about Rural TeleCommentary joining Twitter, please leave a comment or e-mail me. I still plan to consider the possibilities and make a decision in a couple of months.