Okay, slight exaggeration – but it did help with my assessment this week and I figured first years haven’t yet had to put up with my Twitter ramblings. 
Not that I was at all guilty of leaving my video project to the last minute, but I was, on Wednesday night, madly searching for some more information on my chosen story.
It had hardly been reported online, which didn’t exactly help me in quest for interviewees, and despite various phone calls and emails everyone seemed to be ignoring me.
In despair, I took a break and turned to Twitter to see what was happening in the world, and in one of my random moments, decided to search my topic to see if anything came up…
It did. It linked me to people who knew so much more on the topic than I did, and people who I would never have found without it. A few tweets later and I had some interviews and other possible leads to follow up.
I followed up those leads the next day, only to be met by a wall of silence again, or everyone’s answerphone.
I trundled home and searched the name of one of the interviewees – Facebook found its way into the top three hits. I was then linked to an event being hosted at the University of Kent in which my man was speaking! Unfortunately, the event didn’t mention the dress code. I happily walked in wearing an oversized jumper and looking rather windswept, to find that everyone else was all suited and booted. Oopsie daisy. Nevermind, I thought, I don’t know these people and will probably never see them again. So I sat through the meeting, pretending to be a little dappy blonde in the hope that he’d talk to me. Infact he was quite willing to, until he asked me what I wanted to talk to him about… Apparently he didn’t like the answer and the following day suddenly decided he didn’t have the time to talk to me and pushed me off onto KCC’s Senior Media Relations Officer. Regardless of that, I was fairly happy that I had found a way to get to him… Next time, Mr Graham Gibbens, next time…
I guess it wasn’t a total waste of a journey though. I found out from Kent University’s Conservation Association, that the furniture in Portcullis house is atrocious (it’s much nicer in the Lords apparently) and one member even believes the way to pay for the NHS in the future is by “immigrants”. I do believe he spat that word out. Jolly good, Sir…
(The moral of the story: social media is a useful tool for getting people to speak to you) 
Part two tomorrow on how social media ruined my life by distracting me from preparing for tomorrow’s presentation.
P.S. In the middle of organising a meeting for the next edition of the Student mag. In the mean time why not add your ideas to this rather empty looking wall.