Sunday, February 08, 2009

One of the reasons I love Twitter

** TWITTER UPDATE: Fellow adoption/life-blogger, Stephanie, suggested this excellent video about twitter....if you're traveling to Ethiopia and want to update people back home, I recommend checking it out!!

I know alot of my friends don't really get twitter...some of them kind of roll their eyes...or I get comments like, "You update your Facebook more than anybody I know".

So here's the deal for you non-twitterers....

I'm actually very rarely on Facebook. However, using twitter from my cell phone, I can update my Facebook status automatically. So, though my status may change a few times a day, I don't have to look at facebook or get sucked into checking other pages when I update - I just send a text message to twitter and it's done.

The beauty of Twitter has been that it connects people all over the world!! One of the people I follow on Twitter is Brian Seay from Nashville. Brian and his beautiful family were at the Ethiopian Guest Home a couple weeks before we got there. By reading his twitters, I knew there was an internet cafe close to the EGH, learned a little about his family, and knew random things about the EGH - like the fact that there are ipod docks in each room. It was cool to meet them and be able to hang out with their family for the week!

Another Twitter friend from Baton Rouge was meeting her son in Ethiopia the same time we were there.....friends were at the Ethiopian market, when a white woman approached them and asked "do you know Gretchen Magruder?". I was sorry not to get to meet Carole in person...it's such a small world!!

Internet in Ethiopia is maddening...imagine dial-up and then cut the speed in half! After trying to check gmail and blogger, I decided early in the week that it wouldn't be worth my time to mess with the internet. I could, however, text messages from my phone. So I was able to update my twitter a few times every day while I was gone - I've had several people comment on how much they enjoyed getting the updates while we were gone. I haven't gotten the bill yet, but I think it was probably worth it!!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can make people think you are even crazier by using ping.fm to send status updates to twitter and about 15-20 other social networking services. This is what I do and I have had people wonder how I have the time to update Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and a bunch of other services all the time. When all I really do is send one quick update from my phone. http://ping.fm

Stephanie said...

I think you should add this video to your post:

http://www.methodshop.com/gadgets/tutorials/twitter-explained/index.shtml

Carole Turner said...

Yes, it was way cool to meet the Seay family but a bummer you weren't also shopping in the market that day :-)

Gretchen Magruder said...

Stephanie, that's awesome!! Thanks for the link!!

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