What is Twitter and the 10 Ways That I Use It

April 26, 2009 | In: Internet, Web Application

If you watch television news you have probably heard newscasters talk about Twitter or show a Twitter stream of people responding instantly to a question being asks by a newscaster or pundit. Even Oprah has jumped on the Twitter bandwagon.

So, what is Twitter? To tell you the truth I have a hard time explaining it. It is known to be a microblogging service where you have 140 characters to type in “What are you doing?” This information is then shared with your followers on Twitter. When a follower leaves what is called a “tweet” you see it in your timeline. The more followers and people you are following the more interactive Twitter becomes, for some it becomes almost an addiction.

Wikipedia’s definition is:

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website.

When you first join Twitter you have no one you are following or who is following you back. How do you get people to follow you? You first follow them. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/infomaniac. Then you can look at my timeline and see who my followers are, the “tweets” they leave and whether you want to follow them. Usually when you follow a person they will follow you back unless they are a big celebrity like Oprah or Larry King … http://twitter.com/oprah and http://twitter.com/kingthings.

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You can use Twitter to keep up with friends, just have them sign up for Twitter, follow each other, and you can share what you are doing, where you are and so forth. You can protect your timeline so only people who you approve see your updates. That’s how it becomes a social networking tool for you and your friends.

Or, you can be like me and follow lots of people and have many followers sharing all kinds of information. You can reply to followers in the public timeline or send direct messages that no one else sees except the follower you are communicating with.

The ways I use Twitter are

Share “What are you doing?” updates like getting up in the morning or doing work and being bored to not feeling well that day. People respond either with good morning or concern if I’m not feeling well.
Share links with other followers about new software applications, news and interesting blog posts.
Share photos and videos I have taken, mostly of my cat Jack.
Find links from my followers that lead me to interesting stories, web applications, photos, videos and such. It’s fun to check out other people’s links.
Ask questions to my followers, like what kind of smart phone do you use and do you like it. People respond pretty quickly when you have lots of followers.
Answer questions that people ask, that’s if I have the answer of course.
A couple of times I have had problems with my Comcast service and Comcast monitors “tweets” and responds so quickly it can be daunting. You can also follow http://twitter.com/comcastcares if you are a Comcast subscriber you can opt for that but like I say they monitor anyone talking about Comcast and respond. I am sure there are other companies out there that do the same thing.
Keep up with recent news, either through other follower’s “tweets” or followers like http://twitter.com/foxnews.
Follow interesting people like Oprah and Larry King to see what kind of things they tweet.
I follow http://twitter.com/ricksanchezcnn and watch his show. I never have responded with a tweet but I like to see what people are saying on Twitter.

Another fun thing to do is to watch the full Twitter stream of all the people all Twitter. You might find someone who shares information you like or your kind of opinions.

The only way to find out if Twitter is for you and what it is all about is to go to the site and start playing around. Do you use Twitter? Share your Twitter address in the comments and I will follow you.