twit, tweet, twitter

I wonder how many of you know of Twitter, it is a different sort of a social networking site. One quality I can point out is that it is bare. All that I understand so far is that one can 'share' (catch line is, What are you doing?) in the length of a text message, about 140 words. There are just three technicalities to sieve through; Following, Followers and Updates. Friends/Contacts are 'followers', so you follow me and you get updates (What am I doing?), I make.

It is quiet brainless and redundant. You could check these brilliant videos poking fun at Twitter and twitter-ers, Twouble with Twitters: SuperNews! and this one Twitter Tease.

You could ask me, if that is so, what the hell am I doing on Twitter? A great question in many a fatuous circumstance. My reply would be that having never been on Facebook and after a dear Pakistani brother liberated (hacked into my profile and deleted everything) me from Orkut, I needed some internet affliction to stay contemporary and perhaps relevent. Imagine admitting that i was not a part of any social networking groups. So I permitted Twitter to win me over, with its simplicity. I also used the platform, to show off (smart ass comments and my enlightened reading-shared as a tweet) and to network as convincing reasons to tweet.

On twitter, I follow Brahma Chellaney, an interesting (read hardliner) strategic affairs specialist, Anand Giridharadas, a Indian American writer/journalist, to give an example. Chellaney's updates are in the form of small comments on Indian Foreign and Security issues, as well as the links to his media articles, as are Giridharadas's. US President Barak Hussain Obama is also on twitter as are many news and journal organisations which tweet their link.

But this post is not about such arid thrills. It is prompted by a substantially, greater ethereal experience, a starry one. A couple of nights ago, an email in the inbox appeared with this subject tag, "Shahrukh Khan has requested to follow you on Twitter!"

Yes, and it appears (or I would like to believe) that SRK manages his tweet's himself. I mean or I hope, that, this is the least, our Gods ought to be doing, some menial work, sigh!

But, I bet you are confused as to how (does he know I exist) and why would SRK want to follow me and the little dumb, bored updates that I will make, in my efforts to project a (more??eh) sophisticated and a cool version of myself, which would be mostly determined by my very impulsive motivations. You might even wonder, how did SRK, find me, after all, there are millions of people. But he found me, I mean, Satya, me. The secret, dear friends, is a lot less exciting than I have wanted you to imagine. So cutting to the issue at hand, SRK wishes to follow me (on Twitter) as I am following him. Despite such rationalisations, I am flattered, as I bet all losers would be trying to follow him, I wonder, how many such losers would he follow, separating the grain from the chaff. Now I can keep sniping at Dada (Saurav Ganguly) and hope SRK plays into my hands.