You Should Follow Me On Twitter! (I'm Not Kidding -- @kwheaton)

I'm not dead.

I do appreciate the emails (well, email, anyway...) expressing some measure of concern about my health given my infrequent posting schedule over the last several months but I have an excuse. 

I have been busy trying to figure out Twitter.

I know, I know; it seemed useless and futile to me as well.  It felt for so many years like this big swamp of Justin Bieber and Ashton Kutcher at one end and people yakking about what they had for lunch at the other. 

Quite recently, though, it has become something different for me.  It began with a simple decision I made this last summer to migrate my "link list" stuff to Twitter.  Link lists are what bloggers call those long lists of hyperlinks they package in a post for their readers.  They are pretty much a staple of any blog -- when you can't think of anything else to write, you do a link list.

Except that most of the stuff I read -- good stuff -- never made it to a link list at all.  Writing it up takes time and I don't have enough of that.  Twitter seemed like a good way to broadcast the good stuff I had found or, increasingly, have sent to me, without busting the social media, fiddling-with-stuff, time budget.

It worked, too.  More importantly, it led me to explore Twitter more deeply.  Most people familiar with the tool already know it to be an excellent source of real time information and, with a little effort, an outstanding stream of curated news and information.  We have even used it to explore a modern interpretation of the age-old intelligence concept of the "agent network". 

As I move forward, I intend to get back to blogging more.  It is still the best way to express more detailed thoughts about education and intelligence and games and other things that interest me.  Blogs are still, to me, at least, more about the conversation and less about concision.  I have been blogging now for over five years and I just don't see myself giving it up.

Still -- you should follow me on Twitter!