What is Twitter and How to Use Twitter

These days the internet is taking on a life of its own with new social networking sites popping up left and right. The social networking framework that I am going to discuss today may not be new, but it is definitely spreading its wings and ready to fly. You might say it is twittering past some of its competition!

Twitter is a fun social networking site that allows people to sign up and create their own twitter identity. Once you have created your identity, you can write short entries that are published to the world, or if you are a bit more on the paranoid side, to your closest friends and followers. This means that you can update your friends on your whereabouts and plans for the week-ends, share links, inspiring quotes and just rant every now and then. The reason Twitter is so special is that you can publish these short messages, called “Tweets”, using your cellphone or through an instant messenger program on your computer. There are also new applications written specifically for Twitter users to watch the tweets of their friends.

So what makes Twitter different from normal blogs, say like the one you are reading right now? First of all, with Tweets you can only write 140 characters at a time, and these tweets are updated real time. This means that people who are following you will get updates from you almost instantly. They then can reply quickly and you can get a good conversation going. Another important thing that short messages enable is the accessibility. Say you are stuck on the train and you are supposed to meet five of your friends downtown. Update your twitter account by publishing a tweet, and you’ve just notified all of your friends of your transit situation.

So how exactly do you use Twitter? First you go to the Twitter page and sign up for an account. Then you can download some applications that let you watch your fellow twitterers from your desktop computer. Or you can just use your existing instant messaging programs to do that. Similarly you can follow the instructions on the site to find out how to set up your cellphone to work with twitter. If you don’t know anyone else using twitter, feel free to add me to your list. Now to get to the good part: start writing some 140 character tweets!

What should you write about? Well obviously you will need to keep it short and sweet to make it fit in 140 characters. You should also make sure whatever you write has some entertaining value, like quotes, jokes, thoughts, ideas, etc. Then wait for people to find you, or go out and find your own friends. It’s always a good idea to search and see if your friends already have Twitter. If they don’t, send over to this page, or to the twitter page and get ready for some fun twitter sessions! It’s almost like chatting, to the next level!