MuseForJews

Who cares?

The JTA publishes a list of 100 influential Jewish tweeters – just came out.

Recently there was a tweet asking for suggestions for a list of great women tweeters. I believe the word “influential” was used as well.

Got me to thinking…

What makes a tweet great? What makes a tweeter influential?

The JTA (and I certainly don’t mean to pick on the JTA…) shows you how they came to their conclusion here. Numbers, data…

How do we really gauge influence? Do we really think that we can distill it down to a bunch of numbers? Followers? Links passed along? God forbid – number of tweets?

I’m a huge believer in social media, Internet networking, Twitter, electronic communication, blogging… all that stuff.

I love to gather links and pass them along to my colleagues.

But I’m not sure about the whole influential thing.

What does that mean?

In the final analysis, I believe that influence means you had an impact on someone; helped them change, got them to think about something in a new way… And I think we’re fooling ourselves if we think that tweeting will do that.

Recently I got a Facebook message from a former student who told me that she wouldn’t have gotten through middle school if it hadn’t been for me.

Now that’s influence.

And nary a tweet was heard.

Just sayin’

January 6, 2011 - Posted by Tktchr | Just sayin', Social Technologies, Twitter | Jewish Education, Social media, teaching, Technology