The technologically savvy are all atwitter over Twitter.
Twitter, for the uninitiated, is a cross between blogging and text-messaging. Twitter messages, called tweets, consist of up to 140 characters. They are sent to a primary Internet site, and to persons who sign up to receive them. Twitters enable individuals to find out, e.g., what Lance Armstrong has been up to for the past 15 minutes ("Headed to my son's Pinewood Derby . . . .").
But there is twubble in Twitterland. For one thing, it turns out that some famous Twitterers aren't writing their own tweets. Stars such as rapper 50 Cent have ghostwriters to do their texting for them.
And some Twitters are totally pweetend. There's a Christopher Walken Twitter feed, for instance, but evidently the actor is not the writer -- nor is he even pretending to be. The feed is a completely unauthorized, entirely fictional biographical sketch.
What's more, some people don't care. The audience for comedian Tina Fey's Twitterings actually quadrupled after word spread that they were entirely fake.
The appeal of Twitter supposedly lies in its ability to increase social bonds: Twittering makes people feel more "connected." But if large numbers of Twitterers are not actually Twittering, and large numbers of Twitter readers don't care, then what is everyone getting connected to? Something, certainly. But maybe not reality.
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