The Twittering...

Right, as you'll denote from the wee widget on the side of this page I am one of the illustrious Twitterati (@SamuelERobinson), albeit a fairly unsuccessful one. I have, at time of writing, no less than 812 tweets for a mere 43 followers that's a dire tweet:follower ratio of 19:1. I'd like to think my treats (as @LloydWoolf likes to call them) are everything one would look for in a twitterer: Concise, often witty, sometimes banal and yet in 10 months of tweeting I have only 43 followers. Don't get me wrong, I love my followers like family, but within an hour of Bill Gates joining Twitter he had half a million followers (plus this marvellous treat from @Glinner) and Twitter crashed, prompting this picture from some unknown internet genius. I know that the comparison with one of the richest men in the world will do me no favours at all, but I have high standards. Perhaps I should take you back to the very beginning.

March 2009. As an avid listener to Richard Bacon's late-night 5live show (and all the honours and privileges that go with it...) I heard him discuss this new exciting form of social networking, Twitter. 'Ah, what wonders lay within the elusive 140 character Twoosh' I mused and consequently signed up. Bacon was at one point (and possibly still is) the most followed Brit on Twitter, with an astonishing 50,000 more than legendary Twitterer (now in self-enforced exile) Stephen Fry and yet he has only 530 tweets and has tailed off since bagging the prestigious 2 til 4 slot. I dream of 1000 followers, let alone over 1,300,000 and yet for love nor money, nor pestering comedians with @replies have I made significant gains in that time. The summer of 2009 was particularly hard- I managed to lose 10 or so followers for no real reason in particular, but I clawed my way back, slowly but surely.

I know that it has become somewhat fashionable to knock Twitter (yes, Gervais, I'm looking in your direction) and that some have tried but failed to grasp the catharsis, skill and artistry of the 140 character medium (Gervais again, he's a funny guy, but you can't keep the Twitterati down) but the truth is it is a masterful way of honing your writing skills. The 140 character limit forces you to be concise with your wit and numerous comedy writers and performers from the aforementioned Graham Linehan to the criminally funny @serafinowicz (how did he become so very good at this? I suspect a Faustian pact may have played a part...) have grasped this challenge with both hands and created some of the most innovative, interactive wit on the interweb.

There are trending topics for the populars and the Americans (usually nonsense about some Justin Bieber type or other or just plain ridiculous rumours i.e. Johnny Depp and Jeff Goldblum dying - not together, there wasn't some kind of agreement) but the real joy of Twitter is in the simple mirth generated by a brief sentence or two. Many of the finest comic minds in Britain have used it as a promotion, practice and outreach tool and it allows us mere mortals a wild e-lunge at them as we grab their humourous coat-tails and are dragged along with them. My fellow comedy bloggers (@simone_QoF and @JamesWalkerMan) and I have found it a rather handy little distraction through which we are able to investigate the inner-workings of the successful comedian's mind (as well as plug our blogs, of course...).

Another joy of Twitter is the hashtag. This minute piece of internet paraphernalia allows you to lump your tweets in with people talking about the same thing or even create your own fleeting hubs of discussion, allowing you a few seconds of illusory influence before someone more famous than you comes up with something else. For the last week or so I have been trying desperately to get my hashtag #unsuccessfultvpitches (for example: Being Herman - A number of famous Herman((n))s ((thinking Maier, van Rompuy, Li but not Goering)) share a Bristol flat) off the ground (click link for full list and details). It's a simple comic premise allowing you to create a pun on a tv programme and a witty synopsis and yet only me and one other person have contributed. Never shall I cease to attempt garnering suggestions for it and I may well include blog updates of my success (not very likely) or otherwise (highly probable).

I suppose the nub of the issue is that Twitter remains very much a (and I hate to use this miserable titbit of media vernacular) Marmite topic. I personally love it, it has become somewhat of an addiction for me and yet the satisfaction of creating a perfect, witty 140-character one-liner is often outweighed by the ignominy felt after the general disinterest of High Twitiety. Even deceased, legendary, morbid melancholic poet Edgar Allen Poe spends almost as much time lamenting his lack of followers as I do- 'I remain perplex as to why a writer of my wit, imagination & magnitude doesn't possess as many followers as half-wit B-list actors' and 'What must I do for you ungrateful scalawags to adore me even more?'. Both complaints that I myself have just about managed to refrain from spewing out into the e-verse.

'What must I do for you ungrateful Scalawags to adore me even more?' Truer words on the human condition have never been uttered.