Watts Cares with Twitter

Why a twitter account?

It wasn’t easy convincing every member of the Watts Family & Staff that there was an urgent need for a Twitter account – until our local daily newspaper announced a three day hiatus from their newsgathering to celebrate the New Year.

You might be surprised to learn of a series of early deadlines for the Palatka Daily News delivered to your door between December 30 and January 2nd. Thus a family needing to place an obituary in a newspaper before Saturday, January 2, will be out of luck after Thursday at noon.

Not a big deal right?

Would you want to have your loved one’s visitation without having an obituary run in the newspaper prior to the day of the event? If not – it will mean waiting until Tuesday, January 5th to host a visitation.

Here are the deadlines announced by the Palatka Daily News:

For an obituary to appear:

Thursday, the deadline is Wednesday at 3:00 (not unusual for a holiday)

Friday, the deadline is Thursday at 12PM

Tuesday, the deadline is Saturday at 12 PM

I learned long ago not to pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, so rather than object to these deadlines, we’ve launched a free Twitter service known as

PUTNAMDEATHS

It can be accessed at:

http://twitter.com/putnamdeaths

If you don’t know much about Twitter – you are not alone – and this writer is among you.

We’ve launched this venture to ensure that anyone who wishes to have up to the minute obituary information will have access to it when they check Twitter, without artificial deadlines.

Here’s a tip: once you have pasted the above address into your screen, you can click the “follow” button to begin receiving notices whenever a death notice is posted. A link will be included in each update to allow readers the opportunity to connect to the complete obituary. (Remember, Twitter allows only 140 characters in a post, so a death notice, will look much like the death notices that we see in the local newspaper).

We’ll be glad to post death notices from other area funeral homes – free of charge – and link their death notices back to funeral home websites where complete obituary information can be found.

Newspapers are a lively and relevant source for local news. Obituaries are news, and are the not only the first read sections in newspapers, but also the most widely read.

It is our hope that this Twitter service will give proper consideration to those families who face a loss on and around the holidays.