LeVar Burton made me Twitter

 LeVar Burton was in Toronto recently and he invited anyone to come share a pint at a downtown pub. However, I didn’t hear about it. I only found out days later, from an article in the Globe and Mail, because I wasn’t watching Twitter.

Twitter is a micro-blogging Web service that lets users send out short updates (tweets) on what they are doing. The people who follow that person receive these updates on the Twitter page or as SMS messages on their cellphones. (Well, that’s how it is supposed to work. In Canada, only Bell customers receive SMS updates. The service may be coming for everyone else.)

Burton is an accomplished actor (he received an Emmy nomination for his powerful portrayal of Kunta Kinte in Roots), a literacy activist (he hosted Reading Rainbow for 23 years) and he played Geordi La Forge, the helmsman and engineer of the USS Enterprise, through seven seasons of TV and four feature films.

It is, in all honestly, his Star Trek role that would have sent me rushing to that pub, had I known. He has 122,970 Twitter followers, and he used the service to invite any and all to join him for a drink.

I created a Twitter account many months ago to try it out, and I do check in often. But I admit Twitter is not a daily activity for me. Same with Facebook. They’re both great but on some days it’s suddenly or 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening and I realize I haven’t socialized online that day.

And I say that as someone who realizes social media is advantageous to businesses and business people: read here and here for more on that.

So I will get more fully engaged, for lots of good business reasons. And because maybe, just maybe, Geordi will want a beer again the next time he’s in town.

Peter Wolchak
Backbone magazine