Has anyone seen any pigs flying lately? If you did, it’s probably my fault. I distinctly remember saying a few years ago that pigs would fly before I would become a tweeter. Granted, I’m not much of one yet, but I did tweet last week for the first time. Don’t worry, mom, I’m talking computer stuff here. I’ll try to explain it to you once I figure it out myself.

In my defense, that was before Twitter became the tool of choice of the media world and before I re-entered the media world. Plus, my first experience on Twitter wasn’t that great. In 2009, soon after a friend told me it was the ‘next big thing’ and that I should get an account, I did. And within minutes of publishing my account, four men, all unknown to me, began to ‘follow’ me. They had no reason to follow me since it was a basic no-information account. They didn’t ask to follow me like folks do on Facebook and LinkedIn. I quickly decided I didn’t like being followed by strangers so I shut down my account and made the aforementioned swine remarks.

Besides that, it makes no sense that you tweet on Twitter. Why don’t you twit on twitter? Or if tweeting is the right term, why isn’t the website called Tweeter? Everyone I’ve asked that question just looks at me like I’ve got a third eye.

A year ago at this time I was coming to grips with being over 50 and looking for a job. I learned pretty quick that I was way behind in the social media world. I thought having a Facebook page and catching up with that kid that sat behind me in high school and made weird noises was pretty cutting edge.

But the communications world is changing and this old dog is learning new tricks.

In today’s world, more news is being shared online through computers and mobile devices than any other media. Policies of foreign nations are being shaped by videos shot on cell phones being broadcast to the world on YouTube. Anyone who ever wanted to be a columnist can now write about anything they want and post it on a blog for folks all over the world to read. To me, being called a columnist still sounds better than being called a blogger but the blogging world is growing by leaps and bounds.

So it’s impossible to keep up with this world of instant news with a weekly publication. While I can never share a great feature story in the 140 characters allowed on a tweet, I can share a tidbit of breaking news as I learn about it if you follow me @RClineNews. Better yet, follow both of our publications to get tweets from other writers as well. Our handles are @Hville_Standard and @GallatinNews.  If Sumner County sports is your thing, you can follow our Sports Editor Corby Yarbrough; @Corby_Yarbrough.

We will tweet out the headlines and you can read more on our websites, www.gallatinnews.com and www.hendersonvillestandard.com. More details of stories of significance will be in the next print editions.

If pigs still don’t fly in your world because you are not into tweeting, you can get the same breaking news from our Facebook posts if you ‘Like’ us.

So let’s review. You can ‘tweet’ on Twitter or just read other’s ‘tweets’ if you follow them but you have to know their ‘handle.’ Or you can ‘post’ on Facebook or read our ‘posts’ if you ‘like’ us. It’s pretty sad when just getting new on a website is becoming old school.

Now if I can only figure what the heck a hashtag is.

See you next week.