Month: May 2008

10 Months on Twitter

Roughly 10 months and 3,000 Tweets ago, I signed up for Twitter. Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I’ll pick up my 500th follower.

Every time I see that number, I’m a little surprised. I always though I’d be one of those people with a relatively small Twitter following. I’m even more surprised at the gap between the number of people I follow and my followers. I know that the conventional wisdom for many social media folks is that you should follow back everyone who follows you, or nearly so. And for many months, that was my practice. But as the number of people on my follow list crept over 200, I found myself throttling back more and more.

If this were all about just random people and social chat, none of this would be particularly noteworthy. However, in my new job, a not-insignificant number of the user group managers I support are on Twitter, talking to each other (and to me) there. This isn’t just about fun chat anymore, it’s a part of my real work. I need to make that aspect of my Twitter-life a priority.

It’s easier said than done, though. On the one hand, I’ve built connections to a bunch of people on Twitter that I value, and I don’t want to give that up. I also want to have a broad range of voices in my Twitter stream; that’s part of its value. On the other hand, I need to keep the noise level manageable. I just don’t have the bandwidth to follow 500 people; I have to get my work done. I can’t spend all day glued to Twhirl or hitting reload in the browser.

The net result is that right now, I don’t generally follow back new followers unless I already know them or unless they’re part of the Adobe ecosystem, and that I’ve dropped a bunch of people I used to follow – mostly the ones I never had any real interaction with.

Whether I’ll stick to this policy as time goes on, I don’t know. Considering how flaky Twitter has been recently, and how fast the early adopters get bored with their shiny toys, things could be completely different in 6 months. For now, though, that’s the plan.

Rambling Thoughts on Feminism and Politics

Not to make this a “pile on Hillary” kind of weekend, but a quote I saw a week or so ago has been nagging at me.

To feminist writer Linda Hirshman, Clinton’s likely defeat signals a harsh reality that future female candidates will need to consider.

“It shows how fragile the loyalty and commitment of women to a female candidate is. That’s a pretty scary thing,” says Hirshman. “She can count on the female electorate to divide badly and not be reliable.”

That’s a definition of feminism that I don’t understand. In act, it sounds a lot more like essentialism. As a woman who has spent a good portion of her life making her way in male-dominated fields – and as a Jew, to boot – I have an extreme distaste for any ideology that assumes that group characteristics are identical and unalterable.

And yet …. it would make me happy to see a woman elected President, I can’t lie. It would also make me happy to see a Jewish President, although frankly I think that’s even less likely to happen in my lifetime. Still, that doesn’t mean I’m going to put gender or religious characteristics ahead of everything else on the table. Especially when it comes to something as important as a Presidential election.

I’m one of the first generation of American women to be born and raised in a world where women actually had the option to escape the constraints they’d previously been limited to. Is that why I do not feel the pull of identity politics? I consider myself a feminist. Does being a “good” feminist mean that I must vote for a woman candidate solely because of her gender? I don’t think so, but clearly some other women do.

How did things get to this place? And more important, can we fix it?

Home Is The Sailor

Sad news from home today.

‘Tis evening on the moorland free,
The starlit wave is still:
Home is the sailor from the sea,
The hunter from the hill.

Sail on, Chris, you’ll be missed by your shipmates here.

First Steps

Harry Truman famously said on learning that he had become President of the US, “I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”

Not that my new job is remotely comparable to becoming POTUS, but even so, I think I know how he felt.

I’m at the Adobe Community Summit this week, meeting scores of new faces and getting inundated with information. My new gig has gotten Twittered, blogged, and announced at the keynote. It’s enough to inflate anyone’s ego, but the sheer amount of new stuff that I have to assimilate is a good counterbalance.

I was more than a little nervous about starting this job, but everyone has been so warm and welcoming, all I feel now is excited to get going!

Quick Notes

It’s a lovely weekend, too nice for substantive blogging. Here’s a few quick notes though:

  • I did a little playing around with Muxtape recently. Uploading songs is slower that I’d like, but other than that it’s a pretty pain-free process. The results are here.
  • We’re all set for my Vassar class reunion next month. Thinking about how long it’s been since graduation makes me feel very old, but I’m psyched to be going back to one of the most lovely college campuses in the US.
  • Obama has passed Clinton in committed superdelegates, as well as elected delegates.

And finally, a Tennessee Williams quote that’s been floating around my head this past day or so, after wrapping up my time at 4D:

People you’ve known in places do that: they go when you go. The earth seems to swallow them up, the walls absorb them like moisture, remain with you only as ghosts; their voices are echoes, fading but remembered.

The new gig starts Monday.