Here at the Womens Room we love technology. Most of our working lives are spent on our laptops and we really can’t imagine how we managed without Wikipedia, Ocado, Amazon, Facebook etc etc. We get looks of horror, when we tell the younger members of staff what offices were like 'back in the day.' Phones constantly ringing, smoking at your desk, no emails and horror of all horrors, you actually had to get up from your desk and talk to people if you wanted to get things done. Communicate, face to face, are you insane. Why chat, when you can send a perfectly good email to the person sitting right next to you!
We realise that some of our friends and possibly readers (you know who you are) don’t embrace new media and technology with quite the enthusiasm we do and may need a little bit of help when negotiating the latest 'next big thing'. When innovation took place in the past, i.e., the invention of the car, it used to take at least 50 years to impact on our lives. After only 10 years, the internet has changed the way we shop, communicate, share, bank, learn and even how elections are won – The Obama campaign used texts and emails to personally connect with voters for maximum impact. Just think what could happen in the next 10 years, and as none of us are quite ready for retirement (in fact we are secretly looking forward to getting the children off our hands and getting stuck into work full time again) we women of a certain age need to get up to speed.
So we are assuming you are all on board with the basics of the internet (as you are reading this) and hoping you have got the hang of online shopping and Facebook (how could you live without them?!) But have you heard of Twitter? We have friends who are obsessed by it and we are unsure how they have time to actually live their lives as they are constantly 'twittering' about it.
So what exactly is Twitter and why is everyone talking about it? It is in fact, an incredibly simple way of sharing your feelings, expressing opinions or updating information. It currently has around 4,000 followers, and at one point was posting a new comment, or answer to a comment, nearly every second. It asks the question 'What are you doing?' then gives you a small space in which to answer. It only allows 140 characters, so messages have to be short and to the point. Your status is updated on your page (and can be linked to your facebook status) and appears on the pages of people who are following you.
Sounds pointless? Maybe, but it can connect you to the thoughts of other like minded people, link you to your friends and in the case of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, take the place of mainstream media. Many people followed the action on Twitter rather than television, as up to the minute Tweets were posted from people trapped in the hotels under siege.
We are going to give it a go and who knows we may even have a Womens Room Twitter page before long!
