Twitter has fluttered to the mainstream in the past few weeks — at least the microblogging service seems to be mentioned in the media more than ever. So you might be feeling left out if you’re not dashing out 140-character notes to colleagues all day long via the service. But who has the time for all that messaging?
Mark C. Marino, an assistant professor in the writing program at the University of Southern California, found a novel time-management solution: He hired a work-study student to do his social networking for him. Or at least, he pretended to.
As a commentary on the time pressures of social networking, Mr. Marino posted to his own Twitter account in the voice of a fictional personal assistant he called Seth Yoo. The assistant’s messages are also sent to Mr. Marino’s Facebook profile as status updates. The character has been posting several messages a day for the last couple of weeks — though his messages are growing increasingly off-topic.
This week Seth is on spring break, for instance, and he’s posting messages from his adventures using textual shortcuts popular with frequent users of text-messaging services.
“He’s trying to go to Cabo for spring break, but somehow he got stuck in Phoenix,” said Mr. Marino of his fictional creation — which is starting to take up some of his own time to keep going. “He bookmarked the motel he was staying at, and if you look at the review it’s the worst-reviewed motel in Phoenix.” One of his recent posts to Mr. Marino’s Twitter feed read: “woh. head-8. whoz futon iz this?”
Many of Mr. Marino’s friends and followers online seem to have gotten the joke, and at least a few have pointed out that Seth is too exaggerated to be believable.
Keeping up with Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and other tools can seem like a full-time job these days, though for many professors, posting status messages is more of a break than a chore. So perhaps professors will start hiring assistants to do their research, so they can free up more time for Facebook and Twittering. —Jeffrey R. Young
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