the .: fyr :. light

I joined Twitter in April of 2007 for no other reason than it was the newest geek attraction on the block and I wanted in on it – just to see what it was, how it worked. I had no ideas of how I would use it, or how it might help me. I joined for the sake of it.

Today I realize that it was one of the best things I could have done. While I use twitter to put my voice (small though it may be) out there, it has also become one of my primary news feeds and a means of staying in touch with my Jamaican roots.

The first time Twitter proved itself invaluable was on the morning of April 17th 2008: I sat at my desk in my parents home in Kingston, Jamaica, sleepless as usual and geeking-out as I like to do and happened to see one of my twitter friends on the other side of the island tweet about the disastrous rain that her town had been having all night. Ocho Rios was so badly flooded that night, that roads and homes had been literally washed out to sea. And while the local news media had heard nothing about it, I was getting up-to-the-minute updates via Twitter.

While twitter is not by any means the definitive source of news of any kind, it certainly provides summarized versions of the news. Most twitter users will make a short statement followed by a link to a longer article about the item … assuming, of course, there is more to say.

I watched Twitter on the afternoon of November 5th 2009, just after the Fort Hood shootings occurred and was spurred into action because of the panic that I read in every single tweet related to the incident. I realized that people all over the world were hearing scant details about the shootings. What with the panic and speculation and assumptions being spread by twitter on it’s own, I was scared that my mother hearing the news from any source, might be worried sick. It made me pick up my phone and call her – well TRY to call her considering the cell network was so clogged the entire afternoon that I could scarcely get a call to complete.

You see, I knew about the shootings before it hit the airwaves (there’s that inside info source reference again without qualification – let’s just say I know an MP ) and it never once occurred to me that there were people who wouldn’t have known and who would want to know the extent. Once my mother (and hubby’s mother) was called, I started tweeting myself. I needed to be a voice among the many saying that there were some people on post who were fine and safe and that it wasn’t world war III and that as far as I knew, the situation was under control – all f—ed up, but under control.

More recently, it was my “Twitter peeps” who first alerted me to the burning of the J. Wray and Nephew warehouse in Kingston, Jamaica on December 1st 2009. The thing about this event was not so much the “burning of the rum” as most people seemed to have been saying, but the potential for this fire to spread and take with it half of the industrial district in Kingston considering drought conditions at the time.

What amazes me most about Twitter is the timeliness of the updates. Quite frequently I am telling my parents (who aren’t plugged in) about things that have happened before they hear – and they are right there in Jamaica where it all happens.

On top of all that, Twitter is also where I go to get the latest in tech news and reviews – Mashable (for the latest and greatest in the social-networking world) and TUAW (for all things unofficially Apple/Mac) in particular are sites that I follow on Twitter.

Twitter is where I keep up with my friends digital blurbs about stuff they’re doing, reading, seeing, experiencing, wishing for, dreaming of … and while I wouldn’t suggest everybody use Twitter as the sole means of keeping in touch, I like it because it helps me keep in touch along with my many other means.

It’s like me: my blog here is where I ramble long-windedly about stuff like Twitter; Tumblr is where I ramble less long-windedly about stuff I see or read; and Twitter is where I blurt out the short shorts (including links to my blog and Tumblr) – my conglomerate.

How do you use Twitter?

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