Someone just suggested that they wanted to Tweak my Twitter on Twinkle — you wanna what?!

In an age where many of us are offended, indeed upset that that our privacy is being diminished by the growing executive powers and their deemed right to listen in, watch, and read our personal communications, it is surprising how much of our private life we are freely giving up. With programs such as twitter and now twinkle, people, including myself, are freely telling those plugged in and signed up what we are doing and where we are at.

For those of you who are not initiated, Twitter is “a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” Using this platform, you announce that you are going to the store, eating dinner, dancing with your dog, or going to concert. You can also take a picture with your 140 allotted characters, to show what you are doing to your friends and family, or to the world.

If Twitter blurred the lines between what is private and what is public, Twinker (a program made for the iphone that can be linked into Twitter) which utilizes the iphone’s ‘GPS’ capability truly blurs that line. I can announce not only what I am doing, but the GPS capabilities will tell folks were I am doing it. As a viewer, you can choose to ‘see’ people who are posting within a 1 mile radius up to 1000 or more radius. Further you can “follow” or as I like to term it “virtually stock” those people you think are interesting. Those people might be your friends, might be family, or they might be complete strangers.

The other day, for example, I followed a man who was traveling from Seattle to Florida. As if I was watching a soap opera, I tuned in throughout the week while he lost his baggage, met up with friends for drinks, watched the girls on Miami beach, lost his luggage again when flying from Florida to Atlanta, had his birthday, and flew back to Seattle. I felt like a voyeur, but a voyeur given permission to peek into the curtains of someone’s life.

This very public practice becomes very intimate and addictive. As you start to follow both your friends and strangers alike, you feel a closeness that is artificial at most, but enticing nevertheless. Even if you do not know the person--by watching their posts and looking at their pictures, you can feel as if you know them. At least you know what they tend to enjoy doing, eating, playing at and, even, working at. The intimacy is such that it is almost like you are talking one on one with a close friend--even though strangers upon strangers are looking upon--interested--not interested--bored or bothered by your boring life.

As a participant, I cannot control who can follow me if I am public, meaning I have allowed my comments to air publicly. Anyone who finds my comments interesting can choose to follow me, to virtually stock me as I announce the micromoments of my life—bring new meaning not only to the lines between public and private, but between interpersonal and global communications.

So it was the other night that I couldn’t sleep and so on twitter I announced that I couldn’t sleep, because I couldn’t shut my brain down. Should I have been surprised that to that comment someone from Twitter that I do not know in California offered to tweak my Twinkle (to put it nicely)? No . . . but of course I was surprised nevertheless. So is this, in a micro-way, how it feels like to be a Paris Hilton or a Britney Spears? Probably not . . . But I guess that is what you get when you go public!