I joined Twitter recently - or should I say reluctantly. I felt the pressure from the cool people around me. So I joined to see what I was missing or what I was not missing. After a few clumsy attempts to figure out how this tool set works I must say that I found this experience to be confusing.

You see I never could understand what the big hype was. That is due to the fact that most of the "twits" on Twitter were rambling on about inane things like.... Baked beans and how much they loved them. Other tweets, (a message on Twitter.com) offered nonsensical advice about how much they users on Twitter loved baked beans equally.

The only reason why I stayed with the service is because I REALLY wanted to find out what the big hype was about. After all, master marketer Joe Vitale, (Mr. Fire) was on there and I have much respect for him over all. I couldn't imagine him getting involved with something ridiculous. I value his mental capacity and enjoy his books and courses. Also if I am not mistaken I think I also saw author Seth Godin on there as well. These are people I really respected.

Still I found the mind numbing ramblings about Obama, mustard, SNL and baked beans - quite stupid. I endured this for a number of weeks. Whenever I left a message I tried to address it with some common sense and direct people to a worthwhile hyperlink. I used my tweet time to showcase something new that I was working on or point people toward something I found interesting. And thank goodness I did.

What Does Google Think About Twitter?
This is the bizarre thing that happened about a month after twittering around on Twitter.com. My Twitter messages started popping up on Google like ticks on a dog in the SERP, (search engine result pages). I was seeing my thoughts on many subjects that I had posted. I found this somewhat horrifying and yet at the same time I was relieved. You see, I was bothered by the fact that my mere passing thoughts and keystrokes had been immortalized on Google for the entire world to see. Simultaneously I was relieved that I had written something of substance when I decided to twit away on Twitter.com.  I didn't look like too much of a doofus when I Googled myself. There were plenty of tweets listed on the Google result pages about books I have read, web videos I just posted, information sites I found and events that I recommended.

But what about the tweets that center around moronic and nonsensical things? Well I guess those observations about mustard and baked beans and God knows what else will pop up in their own search engine results. And this is what I find so strange about this whole phenomenon. This service is very popular and if you use it correctly you can get some useful results out of it. But if you are going to sit on your patoot all day long and write a gazillion trite and stupid statements about baked beans, care bears or anything else you take the risk of looking like an absolute idiot to the entire world.

That's cool I guess if that's your objective.

Your Thoughts Have A Life Of Their Own
We are living in an age where you can acquire a "digital thumbprint" online. Maybe this does not concern you so much if you work for a company and take money from someone else. But this can have serious negative consequences if you work for yourself or are trying to brand yourself. This can have a detrimental  side effects if you are representing a company or sit on a high position on behalf of a business. These mindless ramblings have the tendency to live on and even go viral in some cases. Other people can quote you in their sites or blogs and this will appear as additional search engine results.

I am somewhat stunned at how quickly you can create a large variety of links on various search engines. If you position yourself correctly you can actually grow these links to a significant number very quickly. I have worked with companies and have helped build as many as 6,500 links in a few months organically. This means that we did not use paid services to achieve these results. With visibility like that you have to be careful what you say online.

I am sure it is already happening but I can see people getting fired over inappropriate comments or for blogging opinions which are deemed controversial by the overall corporate culture. In my days as a corporate drone I had to sign a waiver not to write questionable commentary about  the company I worked for. This also included an agreement that I would not draw characterizations, cartoons and illustrations of my fellow coworkers. Apparently, this had been a problem in the past. I find this hard to fathom now but as we get into a more complicated digital age I see this fear in a new light.

I didn't find this service very useful when I first saw it. I didn't even find the people on here to be all that interesting. But after my tweets became listed on Google I took notice at how powerful and yet dangerous this tool could be if improperly used.

All eyes are upon you. So play carefully out there.