WARNING: People with OCD should stay away from Twitter

Yikes! Somehow I’ve found a new addiction.

How did this happen?

Innocently enough, as addictions usually do… An simple email invitation from my girl, A.

I thought, Twitter? What the heck is that? A quick visit to the website did not tell me much. But when I finally figured it out and suddenly received a text message from my great friend, I thought, “hmm…. okay, pretty cool”.

Come to find out, you can search for anyone in the world and “follow” them, assuming their account is open to the public. I found myself searching on Bill Gates, George Bush, Martha Stewart. As of yet, it seems to be that the majority of the members are techie geeks or savvy bloggers who want another medium to express themselves.

I am now following Guy Kawasaki, the Silicon Valley VC maven and a bunch of other technologists. The way it works is when folks post to their account via email, web, IM or text message, everyone who follows them receives that message either on the web or via text message. It’s like instant messaging for the world.

So now, suddenly, I am being bombarded with a constant stream of information. I gotta say, I’m LOVING it. I’m getting great information that will certainly be valuable to me as a technology sales person and it satisfies my obsessive – compulsive need for constant stimulation. I find myself constantly hitting refresh to get my updates on the web. My favorite followee alerts are set to be sent to my blackberry.

I probably need to weed down my followee list, otherwise, I may lose my job due to the fact that I’m spending all of my time learning random stuff and not selling my existing technology solutions!

Wiki

What a fun word. Makes me think about Hawaiian dances or something. I spent some time on various “Wiki”s this weekend… let’s see, there’s Wikipedia, Wikihow, Wiktionary and a bunch of others. The concept is each site is a giant online resource that can be edited by virtually anyone. So it’s a continually evolving project.

Anyhoo, I wanted to do some research before showing up to the Seder, so I searched on “Passover” and “Seder”. I found myself reading an article, “how to be a respectful Non-Jew at a Seder” — perfect! It actually wasn’t terribly useful given the article was geared for a more traditional Seder.

I found myself getting sucked in big time. You can read about one topic and they always give you links to other “similar” topics. Somehow, I found myself reading, “how to be liked” (!!!) and “how to be popular but not mean”. Are you kidding me? If ONLY Wiki existed when I was in high school. Kids these days really have it easy.

I’m off to read about “how to pass time when bored.” I’ll keep you posted.

Hello my name is Sheila. I am an Internet Junkie.

This made me laugh today,

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/87251

It is actually a notion I’ve thought a lot about and even pondered if I might be afflicted myself. I do have that intense need to be connected at all times. I feel genuinely lost without my “Crackberry” and it makes me crazy if I haven’t checked email in the past hour.

Who knows what nuggets of information may be sitting in my inbox as of yet undiscovered?

The reality is, we’re usually talking about a marketing email inviting me to check out the newest gadgets at Crate and Barrel or another “MyPoints” email presenting me with yet another opportunity to add 5 points (just for reading!) to my growing loyalty program account.

There is no better feeling than to receive an email from a friend inviting me to lunch, or an email from my favorite “email buddy”, Kathy, with an update on what’s going on in her life. Akin to winning a hand at BlackJack, I feel like a winner whenever I check for new mail on my cell phone and see the note “inbox: 1 of 5” signifying 5 new messages are coming in!

So, what do you think? Do I need to start thinking about going to Internet Junkies Anonymous? Maybe… but can we meet online instead?