Twitter Might Be Useful After All

I was ignoring Twitter, after getting my account. I associated Twitter with cell phones, texting, IM, and other modern annoyances.

As I mentioned before, a friend joined up and linked to my Twitter account, so I felt compelled to use it a bit.

I tried lampooning the thinklets people send out, because those little epigrams almost always come from Buddha, John Maxwell, or a mega-church pastor who has not yet been arrested.

But then I said, "Aha. I can broadcast good and bad quotations from Megatron." So I am doing that. I am not going to write, "I am working so hard today, but I am glad I am getting so much done." Or, "I cleaned the patio today. What a job!"

Twitter is simply a way to send out a very short message to a group of people. The device only allows 140 characters, so forget the complete scholarly apparatus. People probably like it because they can send and receive messages from their computers or cell phones. Twitter can be linked to a blog, as several are on Ichabod.

Megatron is the database of quotations I developed after I began using Professional File (DOS) in 1987. I thought, "If it works for addresses, it can also work for text." I named the database after the battery in my car, never realizing that Megatron would be a famous Transformer years later.

When Wayne Mueller formally denied WELS Church Growth programs in The Northwestern Lutheran FIC, I began adding CG quotations, pro and con. The number of WELS and LCMS CG quotations was staggering. Friends mailed me materials to add to the database.

I added another 700 quotations to write Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant. Once the database reached 3,000 quotations, I stopped adding so many. I learned from going through the LCA's The Lutheran that anyone can forget shocking stories after time has passed. The database remembers all the details, the source, and groups content according to keywords, topics, and Scripture.