Three weeks in the Twittersphere

On the 22nd February I wrote the following;

I've spent a long time avoiding following the crowd on social networking sites. I was a Powow user in the early 1990's. I tried AIM and I moved on to Messenger as my main IM solution. I have avoided Facebook and MySpace like the plague. Why? Because I see them as a huge waste of my time and resource and like AIM and MSN Messenger I know I will waste time using them.

So, with all that said, I find that today I have joined Twitter. Having recently heard Steven Fry speaking at an Apple shop via a Podcast I took his advice and began to follow him on Twitter. I already feel like I've been wasting my day wrting things like `I'm cooking Pancakes now` or `I'm watching Sharkwater and loving it`

I'll give it a day or so and see how things workout. If I find I am still following peoples boring daily routines then I'll be asking for my money back!

Having now had over three weeks living in the Twittersphere I have a mixed bag of feelings about it. Currently I am following 27 people and I’m being followed by 28 people. I love the fact that I can follow celebrities like Stephen Fry who do lead an exciting and varied life. I like watching what authors are doing and where they are up to in their latest projects. It is great to be able to interact with an author as you are reading his or her works giving them instant feedback. I suppose there was always the facility to email them but Twitter has more immediacy I feel. The downside is the amount of time I have ended up wasting posting useless snippets of information about my daily trials and tribulations. I have been posting from 6.00am and have found myself writing about taking Josh to school, about my gym and diet habits and about what projects I am working on. Would I stop people in the street and tell them? No. Would I post my buinsess on a notice board in Tesco? No. So why do I feel that doing it in Twitter is any different. I suppose one difference is that I do need to promote my work sometimes to get more commissions and this is a great way to get more people to talk about my art. My recent Silo videos are getting good feedback and they always bring me more work so that would have to be seen as a positive. I have had a few artists and bloggers mention me in their blogs or twitters and that has generated more followers and drawn more traffic to my site. Again, a positive. I have a real problem with a syndrome I call `forum burnout`. If I hang around a forum for too long I find myself getting frustrated with the constant negativity and bickering and I walk away. It has happened to me on ZBrush Central, CGtalk, Spinquad and even my own forum at Subd.com. I have had to stop using certain IM clients for the same reasons. I assume I will end up feeling the same way about Twitter soon but for now the plusses are outweighing the minuses. Let’s see what develops in the coming weeks.

My new modeling sessions have started at Nevercenters users forum. I wanted to do them for a number of reasons. Firstly I like the Nevercenter team and I want to help them promote Silo. Secondly, I like to help people and especially new and up-coming artists. Training gives me as much pleasure as modeling or drawing so these videos fit well with that ethos. I would like to see more people joining in but I suppose that will come. I have a cool Toon image being created by Teyon Alexander this week.