28 Twitterers of Terror
28 Twitterers of Terror
Who's Who In Horror Using The Micro Blogging Website
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Twitter has been around since 2006. SLiTHER director James Gunn extolled its virtues to me in 2007 at the Saturn Awards, after I told him how much I loved — but missed — his blog on MySpace. He used to do really elaborate, hysterically funny, and totally bizarre multimedia blogs on the social networking site regularly (he still posts them, occasionally). Gunn explained what Twitter was, and he was excited about it but to me it sounded really intrusive and time-sucking. I stayed away.
But of course, I had to give in eventually. I joined up in late 2008 and am still liking it. I've found it's a very similar experience to texting with friends. It's not really blogging, since one is relegated to 140 text characters or fewer (length was initially set for compatibility with SMS messaging) — but you can post links to videos, photos and websites (via tinyurl, bit.ly and tr.im). In my opinion it's best used on the phone (I hardly ever call it up on my desktop, and for the iPhone or other touch devices Tweetie seems to be the best). There's an immediacy to Twitter which can be likened to Facebook's "What's on your mind?" system, only with a lot less clutter.
I've learned of a lot of breaking news stories by using Twitter, but mostly I use it to follow my personal friends and a few horror- and scifi-related icons. Perhaps the most difficult thing about using Twitter is finding a balance. It's good to inject some of your own personality and whatever (hopefully) interesting things pop into your mind, but it is also a self-promotional platform for many.
That's where it can become a slippery slope for celebs and filmmakers, because personally I won't follow anyone for very long who does nothing but a) post links or press releases, b) only answers questions from their followers, c) never gives you any insight to themselves as a person, or d) uses the site as a sociopolitical forum for their pontifications.
Are you on Twitter? Thinking about it? Overwhelmed, or skeptical? So you don't have to, I've gone to the site this morning and collected screen-caps from all the high profile horror-related feeds I could find. (Hint: You can tell which ones are my personal favorites by the "Following" tag underneath the username!)
Let the tweeting begin.
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Who are your favorites? Post them in comments, and share!
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