Crysti Couture

I am part of a generation that loves beta testing, signing up with new services, and trying out new things, especially Social Networks.

Theres a lot of irony in ‘Social Networking’; the only place theres anything remotely social going on is in the internet, and chances are that no one is really getting out and being social.

I have had a MySpace since I graduated High School, and like my goth phase in Middle School, it started out as something I thought was cool and hip, but was actually kinda…well,lame.

As much as people will defend MySpace, I will have to completely agree with Stuff White People Like when they say:

“For a brief period of time, MySpace was the site where everyone kept their profile and managed their friendships. But soon, the service began to attract fake profiles, the wrong kind of people, and struggling musicians. In real world terms, these three developments would be equivalent to a check cashing store, a TGIFridays, and a housing project. All which strike fear in the hearts of white people….

Within a matter of months, MySpace had gone from a virtual utopia to Digital Detroit, where only minorities and indie bands remain.”

So, although I have a MySpace, it is severely neglected for a couple of reasons. I hate their Profile 2.0 ‘upgrade’ that doesn’t allow a whole lot of privacy and I really got tired of keeping up with something that I really wasn’t getting anything out of.

I may love fashion and keeping a poised appearance, but that does not make me vain. MySpace is all about vanity and those God forsaken profiles littered with glittery shooting stars, illegible colors and fonts and ubiquitous MySpace pose.

Facebook is nice. However, as I was starting my fresh new realtionship with the site, I discovered Twitter.

I fell in love.

At first, like all new relationships, I was shy and slow to catch on. Then I realized that I could really meet new people, get new ideas, share my own ideas and pretty much show whatever I wanted with the world.

Through sending my random 140 character tweets, sharing links I’m loving, video’s I’m obsessing over and random photos I am taking through TwitPic, people get a really good feel of my personality and follow me if they find what I have to say interesting. Those who don’t like my feed, or suddenly find my posts boring, lacking any value or just plainly get offended, can easily press the ‘Unfollow’ button and never have to hear my antics again. Those who absolutely love what I have to say can share it with others by retweeting my tweet or by replying directly to me and giving me kudos.

Vanity on Twitter is also kept to a minimum. No messy HTML or CSS to mess with and the Twitter page itself can’t really be manipulated other than changing the sidebar colors, text colors and the such. You can however, choose a background of your liking and also choose a profile picture, which is as far as the vanity really goes. There are some vain users out there, where every other tweet has a narcisstic picture of their mug (ahem, @KimKardashian) but unless you’re a celebrity (which many might debate upon in Kim’s case)really shouldn’t be done.

So, if you don’t use Twitter, you should try it out. If you don’t have 24/7 access to a PC, then don’t fret because if you’ve got a cell phone, sending Tweets is as easy as sending an 140 character text to 40404. If your carrier doesn’t support short code messaging, then there are a plethora of applications out there that can enable you phone to send and receive tweets if you’ve got a data plan on your phone.

If you’ve got a BlackBerry I highly recommend Uber Twitter. I’m working on a review for that coming up soon, if I can get a good screenshot app installed.

Happy Tweeting!