Laura Margaret Burbach tagged me in a Facebook list. Out of 25 of her friends that “Changed Their Status too Frequently,” I landed at number seven. Everyone else mentioned attended high school (or surely never tucked cellulite cream under Woman’s Day in their shopping cart). Though David, her father, came in at number 21, not that he bothers wasting money on drugstore, crepey-thigh miracle portions. But change my status too often? That should have been my first clue.

I was born to Twitter.

For you see, twittering is nothing but status reports “tweets” in 140 characters or less. I resisted; it seemed confusing. Then my neighbor, Deidre, pushed me off the tweeting diving board and I signed on with TwitterNation. Now still an infantile twit, I don’t have much knowledge to impart, except that it is fun. Very fun.

The basics are easy. You follow people. Then people start to follow you.  

Sign up at Twitter.com and search for people and things that interest you. Sports teams, news outlets, hobbies,

celebrities, political figures. You get instant updates all day. FYI – if you choose a Boston site get ready to be hooked up to an intravenous Red Sox drip. I follow the Braves, the Wall Street Journal (which tweets by the nanosecond), writers living in Hawaii and Italy.

There’s an eccentric young woman in Los Angeles whose tweets indicate she stays up entirely too late doing very odd stuff. I follow a Red Sox fan in Boston whose identifying picture was a roll of Red Sox toilet paper covered in well, red socks. There’s a musician who tweets his exuberance at completing a bridge and angst at having to buy a lawnmower – then after purchasing the mower; he’s upset it rained. I follow an interesting mom, author and columnist whom I am starting to want to meet for lunch. Only problem is that she lives in Ontario (as in Canada). Tons of biking advice and swimming advice from triathlete types. Bottom line is lots of people drink coffee, hate commuting, leave skid marks trailing out of their office, comment on weather and thankfully, don’t tweet bathroom habits.

You can download Tweetdeck which merges Facebook and Twitter. It’s nuts – four columns of information – a tidal wave that leaves me straining my big toe to find the secure bottom of this vast internet interconnected sea. (I haven’t touched yet.)

Soon the Citizen will be tweeting news happenings around Morgan County.

The world is getting smaller my friends. Join Twitter and follow me. I shall follow you. Who knows where we’re going? But wherever we end up, I’m certain that it will be in 140 characters or less. ;-)