Give the cat a break

Some poor techie writer is getting himself all wound up about the fact that a cat has half a million followers on Twitter. It’s really quite sad when some folk take themselves too seriously.

But it’s par for the course isn’t it. A new tool, gadget, software app or trend comes around and the early adopters jump on it like a rash of measles. (wonders if the example is appropriate)

These early adopters use said new tool with great glee and feel privileged to be the evangelists of this new thing. They promote it and persuade their friends and foe to join and in general they imagine that this new tool belongs to them. After all they discovered it first.

As the tool ages and matures other users also join and at the beginning the new members are like good little sheep and mostly follow what those early geeky adopters have decided this tool should be about.

And the faithful followers follow along listening to the evangelists.

However, as with all good things, it all changes.  The party starts to disintegrate and form splinter groups and all sorts of weird and wonderful new uses are invented for this new thing.

Initially the early adopters/evangelists can stifle this kind of bad behaviour by pouring scorn on these mavericks and making them outcasts. After all this wonderful thing of theirs has to stay as it was when first discovered.

But that’s not the nature of any thing. Time will change everything. Sometimes it changes so much it dies off and sometimes it changes into something even more useful and fun. Seldom does anything stay the same.

With other words, it’s actually fun to see a cat get a twitter following of 500 000. In fact it puts some fun back into what has been threatening to become a seriously boring and tedious social media tool.

Relax Mr TechCrunch writer. You can still do your own thing on Twitter. You can still be your own serious self. But do allow others to follow a cat sprouting seriously inane and sometimes humorous tweets. After all there is that fab website that is all about cheezy cat pics and fabulous captions.