"Twitter? I hardly know her!"
Yes, it's the kind of bad joke Michael Scott from "The Office" might make. But there's an oversharing reality tying status updates with active sex lives.
Social networking and sexual prowess are already bedfellows, according to a survey just released by Retrevo. The Silicon Valley data-tracking company says it examined how much and how often we use sites like Twitter and Facebook. (Answer: a whole lot.) Buried beneath the data is this crucial finding: People are reaching for Twitter after sex.
In fact, Retrevo says 36 percent of people under the age of 35 who responded to the survey admit that they update their status after they get busy. Of those, far more males cop to it than females, and iPhone owners do it much more often than BlackBerry owners. Three times as often.
There you have it: The iPhone is the new cigarette.
Yes, that last part is curious. The "younger-people- tweeting-about-sex-more-often" part makes sense, but the iPhone? What about all those politicians in Washington attached to their Berrys? Are they more shy than we thought? And how about this for modesty: If you're with someone, and things are getting intimate, do you now ask them to put away their iPhone because you'd rather keep things private? And if you're Paris Hilton, is the iPhone the new video camera? Heck, a quick tweet is much faster than having to edit all that video footage. (And less embarassing all around.)
If you think about how incredibly often we log on to social networks these days, it's not that big of a surprise. After all, if 64 percent of us admit to logging onto Facebook and Twitter at work, and just as many do it on vacation, why not after sex? Get this: 40 percent say they log on in the car. That's gotta be more dangerous than doing it in the comfort of, well, wherever you're getting lucky.
U.S. & World
In this age of instant information about everything, the Retrevo survey teaches us at least one thing: We now know why they call it social networking. And somewhere, Barry White is smiling.
OK, seriously, have you ever tweeted after sex? Let Scott know on Twitter: @scottbudman
