Italy Takes to Twitter and Tweets

Initially, many Italians found Facebook a little off putting, and did not take to it.  Maybe Italians did not like having to deal with settings and an interface in English.  Now Facebook is in Italian, Italians are all over Facebook.  Now, the same thing seems to be happening with regard to Twitter.

Before the summer I mentioned Twitter to students doing a tourism management master at the business school where I teach English.  Out of a class of 20 odd, only one or two had heard of Twitter, and none had, alas, tweeted.

From what I understand, this is all about to change.  Soon Italians will be twittering as much as they are facebooking, if not more so.

I do have a few Italians in amongst my almost 400 Twitter followers, but recently a couple of major league organisations here in Italy have started Tweeting, and, oddly enough, two are following Blog from Italy’s twitter stream: newsfromitaly.

La Gazzetta Dello Sport and Microsoft Office

The two major league players following newsfromitaly (1000+ tweets, following 340, 389 followers ) are:

• La Gazzetta Dello Sport (21 tweets, following 1230, 542 followers), Italy’s biggest sports newspaper, and
• Microsoft Italy’s Office outreach team (25 tweets,  following 1782, 294 followers ) – unless you come from another galaxy or dimension, I imagine you probably know something about Microsoft.*

Having such fabulous followers makes my newsfromitaly Twitter alias feel important, although I suspect I’ll lose these mega-followers once they realise that in world media terms, Blog from Italy is about a tenth the size of one of Rupert Murdoch‘s toenail clippings – and even that’s probably something of an overstatement.

Italy's Gazzetta dello Sport is in Twitter

Oh well, for as long as these two eminent Twitter followers follow me, I’ll feel cheerful, and it is a dull and drizzly day here in Milan this Monday.

By the way, I generally twitter in English.

Twitter Hits Italy

Anyway, regardless of whether Gazzetta Dello Sport and the Microsoft  Office team should be following this here media toenail clipping, it’s interesting to see the Twitter phenomenon finally sink it’s teeth into the Italian techno-psyche.

For the moment at least, (today, probably!) I can say I’ve got more Twitter followers than Microsoft! Well, sort of.

*Those from other galaxies or dimensions should try Wikipedia – in this dimension – to find out about Microsoft.