COPA Flight 8 and Twitter

Adam Hunt said, “COPA Flight 8 has now been doing social networking on Twitter and Diaspora (D*) for about 14 months, having started in January 2012, so I thought this would be a good time to give an update on how it is going. I manage the flight's D* account, while Mike Shaw handles Twitter, so I will leave it to him to provide an update on that.”

OK, ok, I will bring the Twitter business up to date. First, Twitter, as you likely know is a business that allows free access to sign up, tweet and read tweets, i.e., Twitter postings. I am far less active on Twitter than Adam is on Diaspora.  (The name “Diaspora” sounds like a digital laxative, or something.) Adam does a posting every day or so. I managed a tweet every three days or so. My tweets tend to be topical although several include photos of aircraft taken in China’s Aviation Museum.

I have 107 followers, not many by Twitter standards, but given my limited activity not bad. Most are in North America, a few in Europe and a couple in places like New Zealand. I follow 153 twitter users, most again in North America. I tend to follow users that point to news items, interesting stories or publish interesting photos. For example, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield’s postings from the Space Station are amazing. I also follow non-aviation twitters associated with photography and video. As well I follow some economic tweeters. I would follow other COPA Flights but I can only find one other flight using Twitter, Flight 10 from the Saskatoon area.

I haven’t put much effort into seeking followers. I have had almost no comments or re-tweets and I have not commented on many tweets by others. I do not automatically follow those who follow me. I find the number of tweets is just overwhelming even though I follow  a mere 153 others. I like most on Twitter I lurk. I find the newsy links to be especially interesting.

The bottom line, I doubt that twitter has brought any new members or a great deal of interest in Flight 8, but I have found it a fun interesting experience. Certainly better than Facebook. I will continue my limited Twitter efforts. See you on Twitter at @copaflt8.