Twittersphere:
Hugh Hewitt is among the leading conservatives who are urging conservative or libertarian public officials and commentators to start using Twitter. The Top Conservatives on Twitter website offers a wealth of feeds to which one can subscribe. If you would like to subscribe to my feed, it's @davekopel. (Go to http://twitter.com/davekopel, and click "follow.") My twitterfeed copies the content from my RSS feed (http://www.davekopel.org/feed.xml), which supplies links to my latest articles; the twitterfeed also includes my random thoughts on various subjects. Some readers may be interested in the twitterfeed of my Independence Institute colleague Ben DeGrow (http://twitter.com/bendegrow), who writes on Colorado education issues.
Twitter is a phenomenon, but it is a different phenomenon and does not substitute for either a blog or its comments section or an RSS feed.
Twitter : blogging :: instant messaging : email
Twitter is a website where you can post messages up to 140 characters in length. If you're cool, people will subscribe to (or "follow") your feed; if you're not cool, you can "follow" the cool kids, and reply to their messages (done by typing @user_name) in the hope that they'll decide you're cool and start following you.
There are various programs for interfacing with Twitter, both for computers and cellphones/blackberries, so people can Twitter from just about anywhere.
Depending on the quality of the people you follow, Twitter can be awesome or asinine. There are some people who can tell funny anecdotes in 140 characters, and then there are guys who insist upon telling the world, "Decided to get coffee from Dunkin Donuts instead of Starbucks."
If you are liberal, you can do anything and be forgiven instantly.
But conservatives will have their Twitterings hung around their necks forever and ever. It's just not worth it.
This is the future of conservatism? One of us needs to get a life. Kids have time to waste on this IM silliness -- because they're kids. I'm all grown up and my time has opportunity costs.
Based on the past couple of elections, wouldn't the prudent thing be to do the opposite of whatever Hewitt suggests?
Tnord.
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