{"id":4627,"date":"2013-03-22T08:00:08","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T14:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=4627"},"modified":"2013-03-22T01:17:14","modified_gmt":"2013-03-22T07:17:14","slug":"twitter-tweets-teaching-an-old-guy-new-tricks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=4627","title":{"rendered":"Twitter, Tweets & Teaching an Old Guy New Tricks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twitter, the social media phenomenon, turned seven on Thursday<\/a>. In terms of technology, seven years is a lifetime. Seven years ago, my phone wasn’t smart, I had not entered the blogosphere and, I hadn’t heard of the Twitterverse. Fast foward to 2013. It seems like everyone has a Twitter account, whether they use it or not. Even Pope Francis has his own official Twitter account (@Pontifex), although he has only tweeted three times since his election as Pope last week<\/a>. But, given the fact that Pope Francis already has over 2 million followers, I’m not sure he has too much to worry about when it comes to the frequency of his Tweets. Perhaps the old adage, “less is more,”<\/em> might apply to the Pontiff’s Tweets.<\/p>\n

As an old guy (46 seems old when it comes to using Twitter, as my 13 year-old son will attest), I have been late to the Twitter party. Although my From Law to Grace<\/a> blog articles automatically (and somewhat magically) become Tweets, I have not really utilized Twitter until recently. I suppose that hanging out with some younger guys (@drrandle; @jaredhmoore) at last summer’s SBC Annual Meeting in New Orleans gave me a desire to try some new tricks, although my hiatus from blogging also delayed my full-orbed use of Twitter until recently.<\/p>\n

With a new I-Phone 4 (it was a free upgrade) replacing my pathetic Droid, it has become much easier to use Twitter. Now I’m apprised of the latest Tweets from those I follow (41 and counting) and can more easily compose Tweets from my phone to send out to my legion of followers (35 and growing). I know it’s not much when compared to the Pope, but a guy’s gotta start somewhere!<\/p>\n

With 411 Tweets under my belt — most of which are simply Tweets of my blog posts — it’s now time to step up my game when it comes to Tweeting. Although I can compose a basic Tweet, I’m still learning how to use #hashtags, how to Tweet a link to an article (I think I did that one wrong today), and how to retweet someone else’s Tweet. And, as a former attorney-turned-pastor, I find it terribly difficult to compose a Tweet using only 140 characters. I’ve been known to give rambling, 15-minute answers to simple questions at a church business meeting and, on occasion, to “go over”<\/em> the allotted time with my sermon. Do you realize how hard it is for someone who used to get paid by the word to limit his speech to a measly 140 characters? Believe me. It’s much more difficult to be pithy than to be verbose. Even without Twitter, that’s a challenge that most pastors face every Sunday as we step into the pulpit. We can always learn to be better communicators<\/a>, whether on blogs, on Twitter, or in Church.<\/p>\n

I don’t know whether or not Twitter will make me a more effective communicator, but it can’t hurt. I’ll try to use Twitter in a positive manner, hopefully avoiding some of the inane Tweets that many celebrities seem to be fond\u00a0of making<\/a>. So, as I end this post, let me make a plea (hopefully not a shameless one) for you to follow me on Twitter @fromlaw2grace. As the pitchman for a famous commercial from the 1980’s<\/a> would say, “Thank you for your support!”<\/em><\/p>\n

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Twitter, the social media phenomenon, turned seven on Thursday. In terms of technology, seven years is a lifetime. Seven years ago, my phone wasn’t smart, I had not entered the blogosphere and, I hadn’t heard of the Twitterverse. Fast foward to 2013. It seems like everyone has a Twitter account, whether they use it or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,11],"tags":[170,2473,417,2472,1853,2476,2407,2474,868,2475,1613,1011,2471],"class_list":["post-4627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-culture","tag-blogs","tag-droid","tag-from-law-to-grace","tag-i-phone-4","tag-lawyer-turned-pastor","tag-less-is-more","tag-pope-francis","tag-pope-francis-twitter","tag-sbc","tag-technology","tag-tweets","tag-twitter","tag-twitter-turns-seven"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-1cD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4627"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4635,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4627\/revisions\/4635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}