Tonight I Experienced the Power of First Impressions on Twitter

Up until tonight I have been living in a filtered Twitter stream of MATC students and faculty and a few random IT sites for information to read and post. Then I signed up with Twellow. Seriously, this rocked my world.  It's not because Twellow is this amazing site. It brands itself as the white pages for Twitter, which sums it up to a tee. The earth shattering experience was seeing all the profiles that are out there and how it really is so important to capture what you are in a picture and a few short words.

I don't mean to play into stereotypes here (computer programming student), but I can honestly say understanding how other people think and the choices they make has been a mystery to me all of my life. It's totally different than how I see things. I think that is why viewing this site was so amazing to me. When I viewed Twellow, I thought "This is like being in junior high all over again." They are pictures of how people want others to see them. It's the whole image thing that consumes our society. It was just another confirmation to me that things truly don't change.

So then out of curiosity, I looked at the 995 people Sara Chips follows. She is this hilarious women in IT that I can't even remember how I found out about. So, I started looking at the people she follows. Suddenly, I truly got it. Out of all those 995 people, only 13 people stood out enough for me to either be irritated by or enjoy. What does that say? The cliche "You don't get a second chance to make a first impression" was so clear!

What makes me notice them? It is not only their blurb on Twitter or their picture. It is totally a combination of the two. Okay, this isn't ground breaking news. Clearly. I know this. You know this. Everyone knows this. This is what we are learning in our social media class. But to EXPERIENCE this, is a totally different animal. To just view these profiles, you instantly think you know what they are all about. You brand them as posers, wannabe's, women looking for a man not a job, funny, clever, and most often BORING! I would definitely include myself in the boring category for right now and have made a goal to change that. Instantly, I changed my blurb on twitter from three long sentences about being a teacher and programming student into simply "Taking a leap into programming."

Some of the motto's I liked were :

• Obsessed with living well. 
• My secret is not being terrible at a lot of things
• World's Toughest Programmer
• Geek of all trades | AD at @SocialOgilvy | Host@BeerDiplomacy | Friend | Rockstar | Wannabe Comedian
• Web developer. JavaScript, Node.js. Building software with a passion. I enjoy reading. I love pancakes and exceptional coffee. 

 This whole experience was like what I imagine speed dating to be. You never get back those first few seconds to say what you want to say about yourself before the person who is looking at you goes on to the next.