Twitter Has No Time Zones

Image courtesy of ABC

Everyone is still talking about Twitter. One thing I think everyone is realizing is that Twitter, more than any other social network, is the best at spoiling the ending of a much anticipated television show.

For example, last night many Americans geared up to watch the season finale of Grey's Anatomy. I know this for certain as Twitter informed me - it was one of the top trending topics being tweeted last night. It's no secret (unless you just don't watch the show), one of the main characters has had a brain tumor in the last few episodes. Plus, in the "real" world, there has been a lot of speculation that this person who plays the brain tumor patient was leaving the show to pursue movies full time. So the debate was on: Does she live or die?

But of course there was more. There is always more (well, if they writers are good). And as the plot thicken, I clicked on the hashtag marked #grey's. There were a lot of "OMGs", ohhs and ahhhs, and just generally people showing their disbelief over the season finale's storyline.

And then I saw that the people on the West Coast were just settling in to watch their season finale of Grey's Anatomy. I say their because if they were not careful on Twitter and were tempted to clicked on the little hashtag marked #grey's, they would be eliminating all element of surprise for themselves. How sad, I thought.

My point is, Twitter can be used as a real time discussion of all things - except for subjects that have surprise endings. Twitter does not know the meaning of time zones. So, for the people in other time zones that wanted to get on Twitter last night and discuss Grey's Anatomy as the show happened, well, it just wasn't possible because within that same stream were people who had already seen the show.

So, with new technology, comes new habits we have to adapt. If we do not want our endings spoiled, we have to learn to stay off of Twitter (well, Internet period).