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I am in Chicago attending one of the most credible and well-respected publishing conferences in the world. The Folio Show brings together the brightest and most successful leaders in the publishing industry for exclusive training and insight into the newest trends, revenue-generating ideas, management techniques, digital advancements and groundbreaking technology.

The buzzword of this year’s event?

TWITTER.

Even though I try to be hip, I must admit this is the first time I’ve ever even heard this word. Therefore, I do not pretend to know what it means. But I am a reporter, so I am asking questions. Seriously. I’m having intelligent, in-depth conversations with publishing executives about tweeting.

Apparently, those who tweet (yes, that’s the verb tense) send instant messages to a network of people who want to receive them. What do they want to know?  It’s simple—“What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. According to Twitter.com, “whether you’re eating an apple or looking forward to the weekend or heading out of town, it’s twitter-worthy.”

The New York Times calls Twitter “one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet.” TIME Magazine says, “Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app,” and Newsweek noted that “Suddenly, it seems as though all the world’s a-twitter.”

Barack Obama tweets, but Sarah Palin trends (there is a difference, but I’ll have to get back to you on that one). So, I figure if it is good enough for them, I’ll give it a try. If you dare, click here to join my twitter universe.

I realize that anyone who isn’t related to me would have no interest whatsoever in my everyday activities, so I would never bore you with that. I promise I will only tweet about things relevant to the pump community (now, there’s a sentence I never thought I would write).

This is an experiment. I cannot guarantee it will have a long life. But no one will ever be able to tell me I’m not willing to tweet.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 8:04 pm and is filed under Michelle Segrest Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.