Hey! Mac User. What Are You Doing Now? Twitter?

My possibly soon-to-be intended significant other told me to download Twitterific and put it on the Mac. You know, so we can keep in touch.

Wil and I work in the same building, on the same floor, and we’re almost married. How much more in touch can our Mac make us?

The new social revolution is here and now, and Mac users are caught up in it all. Right? Tell me you are. I don’t think I am. Hillary Clinton has a MySpace account. Maybe a FaceBook account, too. I’m sure she writes her own blog.

Anyway, Wil signed up for Twitter, and wanted me to sign up. Since we’re both Mac users, that meant downloading and installing the latest of the ultra chic utilities for Twitter, Twitterific, made by the fine folks at the IconFactory, makers of iCandy-like goodness for Macs.

So, what am I missing? I have an iPhone. Wil has an iPhone. We have text messaging. We have iChat and Skype and AIM and probably two or three or four more ways to communicate digitally that I can’t remember and don’t care about.

Is it really necessary to add another piece of software to my Mac so we can ”keep in touch?”

For the uninitiated, and for those with more time to flitter away… or is it ’twitter away?’ Either way, there’s a social revolution going on in the world today among the digerati elite which escapes me but not my notice. Twitter is the latest.

So I missed MySpace and FaceBook. I’m a busy worman. Now Wil wants me to use Twitter so we can ask each other and tell each other the answer to “what are you doing now?”

Twitter is a community site. Users post what they’re doing at any moment using software on their computers. Twitterific is it for Mac users. According to everyone, including Wil, but no one that I know who is sane and has a shred of dignity left, Twitter is easy to use, fun to use, addictive to use.

In this rapid-paced world of digital this and that, someone came up with yet another way to tell others, and not just the person next to you in your cubicle farm, but others as in everyone, exactly what you’re doing right now. They don’t even have to ask the question, ’what are you doing now?‘ They don’t even have to care.

Go to Twitter, set up an account, download Twitterific, and tell everyone what you’re doing now whether they want to know or not. It all shows up on the Twitter site for your account, which your friends can see online, in Safari, in Firefox, in Internet Explorer for Windows users. It’s like FaceBook without the faces.

Twitterific itself is an attractive Mac utility which logs you in to Twitter, manages multiple Twitter accounts, shows replies and direct messages right on your Mac’s screen. Twitters, those who use Twitter, communicate via tweets, a simplified way to irritate everyone at once, so it seems.

Twitterific will display how many unread tweets you have in the Dock icon. There’s even audio notification for new tweets, and a way to switch back and forth between public tweets and friend, or private tweets.

Guess what? It works. It’s easy to use Twitterific to send tweets, messages, to everyone else using Twitter.

Somehow I envision millions of office workers here in New York who sit at their computers all day sending out questions and responses while pretending to work. Is this a new socialized way to stick it to the man?

Alright, I want to keep in touch with Wil. He buys me stuff. He takes me places. He works out and gets sweaty and cleans up nice. But I really have to ask myself why I need to keep in touch even more with the guy who lives next door, works next door, and spends more time with me than anyone since my mom when I was five.

Twitter is interesting. Twitterific is actually quite cool, and twittering or tweeting, whichever it is, can be interesting and addictive. I’m just not sure I want to join yet another social revolution. Being a Mac user during the Dark Ages of Windows Crusades was bad enough.

Now I understand why Microsoft’s Zune, a pathetic and anemic attempt to one-up Apple’s iPod generation, used the term social in their advertising. People socialize today in different ways. Mac users actually have to socialize with former Windows users who have flocked to the Mac.

I would give you more detail about Twitterific and all the nifty things it can do to spice up your otherwise downtrodden shell of a life, but I have seven tweets waiting for me.

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