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Twelve (Plus Two) Twanswers 2 Twitter & Twitterati Questions

May 16, 2010

“You’re a Twitter personality,” Alice Haine said.

“Me?” I replied, laughing. “You must be joking!”

Twitter user. Twitter novice. Twitter bumbling idiot perhaps.

But Twitter “personality”? Uh. No. I think not.

Nevertheless, freelance journalist Haine (aka @FreelanceDubai), convinced me (surely vanity just missed out on being one of the seven deadly sins), to have a half hour chat with her.

She would use the information, she said, for an upcoming article she was writing (and I guess by now must have written), on UAE “Twitterati” for The National, an Abu Dhabi-based daily newspaper. Fame and fortune are soon to be mine. (Or not, most probably lol).

The other “personalities” with whom I am destined to share the limelight are considerably more worthy than I expect ever to be.

Da Featured "Twitterati"

A little birdie told me they include:

woman about town @DubaiWriter (aka Kellie Whitehead, freelancer writer and broadcaster, and mastermind behind mamavents, a cool group that organises family-oriented events in Dubai),
the inimitable, eloquent and sassy @JessicaSwann, host of daily radio show Dubai Today,
filmmaker @AshrafGhori, creative force behind the UAE’s first computer generated short film Xero Error which is currently at Cannes (see the trailer here),
and daily bloggr, super geek, and SEO expert @manikarthik who has a whopping 22,825 Twitter followers as I write this, and likely a whole bunch more as you read it. (My following of 950 pales in comparison…)

I await the article with bated breath, curious to know how I will fare in the midst of such august company….

In the meantime, for your listening pleasure, I thought I would share some of my answers to Ms Haine’s questions (I stupidly didn’t record her voice, so the conversation is TOTALLY one-sided, but hopefully you’ll get the gist anyway…).

Da Questions

The 12 questions were versions of: 1) When did you start using Twitter? 2) Why did you start using Twitter? 3) How do you use Twitter? 4) Why does your Twitter profile say you’re located in Iran? 5) Who do you follow? 6) What kind of people are on Twitter? 7) How many people do you follow? 8) What’s a tweetup? 9) How old are the "tweeple"? 10) What do you get out of being part of the Twitter community? 11) How else do you benefit from being on Twitter? And 12) Is your Twitter persona da real you?