@Ohhhh, I GET IT!

Last night I sat here watching SNL -- and though I had every intention of catching it from the beginning (Justin Timberlake was hosting => always a good show!)....I managed to make it in an hour late. When I flipped it on, Ciara was performing her song "Love, Sex, Magic" with JT...and it had a Janet-esque vibe to it with the mix of singing and choreography.

That is, if you can even bring yourself to compare the performance to Janet. She is the performance icon to which all other singing and dancing acts are compared, and well, last night's show just didn't come close. She's clearly a good dancer, and an even better singer...but don't try to load up your number with a bunch of moves that you can't master. Especially if your show slightly resembles that of something Janet would have done circa 1993. Go hard, or go home. Ciara went limp.

So I took my sentiment to the WWW, looking to see if there were any real-time bloggers out there with just as small and meaningless of a Saturday night life as I...and I stumbled into Twitter. I started a Twitter account a couple of months ago -- but until yesterday, I simply didn't get the point. If it's all about posting what you're doing, then why not just continue doing so on Facebook where I already have an account, I already have a solid grasp on its purpose -- and I've carefully crafted my friend base. It's like....why would I go out and get a new cell phone if my current cell phone works perfectly well, and I already have all of my contacts in place. But I was DYING to find out what others were thinking about this Ciara performance....and no one seemed to care on Facebook...??

So I checked out the SNL website community forum on NBC.com....and still, no one seemed to be as hyped up about this whole Ciara thing as I was. Then it dawned on me: is it situations like these where people tap into the new social phenomenon known as Twitter to get the real-time pulse on what folks are thinking?? The answer, my friends, is YES!

Twitter is merely a news and marketing tool for those that are into news and marketing. Twitter is also a social networking tool for those of us tools who are up socially networking at ungodly hours on Saturday night. When you update your status, for instance, the folks at Twitter will aggregate all of the common words being discussed at any particular time, and those common subjects will appear in the right-hand column under Trending Topics. For instance, right now the top Trending Topics are things like "Celebrity Apprentice" and "Mother's Day," among others. This means that out of all the current people Twittering -- those are the most common words/topics being discussed.

So where does this leave the amateur Twitterer? Actually, I'm pretty sure there is a technical term for a "Twitterer," but I'm not at all quip on the Twitter lingo yet...so LAY OFF ME! Just go to Twitter, sign up -- and post what you're doing. If you want to know what people are Twittering about, then you can search by topic. Say you want to know what people are saying about Barack Obama at any particular juncture. You can search "Barack Obama," and it will list all of the latest Tweets that include his name. If you like someone's post, and you want to respond to it, you can hit the little arrow key next to their profile name and "@" them. Then that person will be notified that you responded to their post.

Twitter differs from MySpace and Facebook in that you don't build a friend base, and you have a limited profile. It's simply there for the real-time updates on what you and the rest of the world are thinking. I see where it's a useful tool for those companies rolling out a new product, or for news outlets to see what people are most interested in discussing/learning about. But as far as being just a regular ol' stopper by...it's no more useful to me than Facebook or MySpace, and to those sites...I will remain loyal.

I see this has nothing to do with parenting, baby-makin' or annoying grocery store encounters....but I know that I'm not the only amateur Twitterer out there that doesn't understand the point of Twitter -- and hopefully the light that I can shed on its purpose will hit you where the sun don't shine, ya dig?

PS: Let's TWITTER! trhamden is my name, being a badass mommy is my game! Happy Mother's Day, snitches!