April 4, 2009 -- Our chief editor Patrick McLaughlin has begun Tweeting, or Twitting, or Twittering, or whatever. For a little while now, he has been Tweeting about events and news related to the cabling industry during the week. On weekends he pretends that anyone cares about his personal life and Tweets about that. Someone told him he should open a separate Twitter account for his personal use, but the truth is he was lucky to have successfully opened the account he did. He doesn't have a clue how to open a second one.
So far he has Tweeted about UL's counterfeit-cable alert as well as SuperComm moving frome June to October and a few other goings-on. But he has run into a problem. One of Twitter's rules is that the number of people he is allowed to follow is somehow related to the number of people who are following him. And if you have ever met or spoken to him, you probably understand why he has not exactly attracted a huge crowd of followers. He's hoping that some of you will begin following him on Twitter so that he won't be forbidden from following others.
McLaughlin was first attracted to the social-media site because of its name. When he was a youngster, he recalls, pretty much everyone called him a "twit" – fellow students, teachers, guidance counselors, his mother, etc. So he thought the site might have been created especially for him.
You know how wrong he is, but if you find it in your heart, you can begin following him anyway.
On the web:
Patrick McLaughlin's Twitter page