Twitterers that blurt, plop

Expergiscere et coffeam olface[1]

Just read Mr. Keith Burtis, woodworker, media maker, and PodCamp veteran, as a guest blogger on Chris Brogan's blog. http://www.chrisbrogan.com/guest-post-twitter-to-converse-or-to-broadcast-that-is-the-question/
He confirmed what I suspected about TWITTER communications. If you just use it as a place to announce, to sell and to preach, it really won't work because you are not conversing, dialoguing and really engaging in conversation with others.

Example: An organization that I am part of sent me note a few weeks ago asking if I would help announce a particular health campaign item in my TWITTER and BLOG. I did but I didn't like it. I got no reaction, response nor any evidence that anyone paid any attention.

I want to disseminate information but I don't think that just announcing things creates the network and interchange I seek from TWITTER, BLOGGER, LINKED IN and the other tools I'm using. The Brogan/Burtis blog helps distinguish among sharing, promoting, and blurting.

Even when some people seem to be just blurting, I randomly respond to their rants and it's interesting how surprised some are that someone else responds to their posting. I did receive the online equivalent of a cold-shoulder from some educators that were carrying on about their professional in-service and praising a consultant that I consider fairly bigoted and who is gaining great economic and publishing benefit by colluding with common prejudices that many principals and teachers have. I dropped in some comments and was given some quick, dismissive responses. I even emailed some longer articles that logically described my objections and received no further response. It was clear that those teachers didn't want me in their public but actually quite selective online discussion.

(I had been hoping that those whom I was trying to connect with would check my profile, my blog and other online data that would show them that I was a bona-fide educator and could possibly carry on a meaningful conversation. If any of those teachers from that clique did check me out, I obviously didn't meet their criteria. That's OK. I'm also a snob about certain things except I wish they wouldn't dangle their very interesting educator’s chit-chat on my screen. I'm slowly learning the more subtle and intricate aspects of TWITTER communication.)

Let me move away from the TWITTER vines with such low-hanging but very bitter grapes.

I know that just trying to announce, sell and preach doesn't work well on TWITTER and it is not very productive in blogging. Not for the long haul, anyway. It doesn't work in my office, nor with the teachers, parents, students and broader communities that I want to be connected to, and I'll probably occasionally forget my own tenet and then, upon reflection, see why certain on-line communications seem to plop.

What do you think, twitterers and bloggers?

[1] Wake up and smell the coffee. Latin for Even More Occasions. Henry Beard.Villard Books. New York.A.D. MCMXCI