Twitter, Twitter...

by Sarah Manners

Twit is one of my favourite words; I find it to be a nice apt and succinct way of describing certain individuals. The Twits is one of my favourite books – you’ve gotta love the “dreaded shrinks” but the word “twitter” makes me think of birds and while it may not be normal I have somewhat of an irrational fear of the little sky rats. I’m more of a dog, hamster, ferret type of gal. So perhaps I was inherently put off by this Twitter rage initially but as I read the volumes of posts that are being written around it my opinions are starting to change.

Twitter is the social networking buzzword of the moment, and essentially allows you to share messages (of sms length) with your social network via a mobile device, IM or on the web. Your Twitter messages are sent to your own personalised Twitter page from where you can add friends and grow your network. You can check out what everyone is up to and subscribe to their Twitter feeds. While Twitter is primarily there to connect you with your network real time, it does have other uses which Amit Agarwal and Chris Brogan summed up quite nicely.
 
When I first went on the site I thought… mmm this looks like it would appeal to my 16 year old brother (who thinks I’m a geek because I blog but can’t seem to justify that he could perhaps be one too – I mean what does he think MySpace is really) but as I delved into a bit more I realised that its not only for the teens, I mean even Robert Scoble is Twittering.

Mitch Joel described it as “being to blogging what post-it notes are to note books” in this interesting post. Essentially as soon as you see, hear or experience something worth talking about you can post it to your twitter page.

Mitch also had this to say…“If you’re still trying to wrap your head around Twitter, try it out. Either you’ll feel comfortable telling people what you’re doing right now (and reading what others are up to) or you’ll wonder why anybody would care whether or not you were going to pick up your kid at school or baking a pie for dessert.” I must admit that I do wonder – who on earth would care what I am doing right now from time to time – but people just do, isn’t it bizarre the way that

evolving from private beings to networking extraordinaires at a heart stopping rate. Who would have thought?

Ok I have written the word twitter more times than is socially acceptable – I’m off to get Quirk twittering. Before you rush off and do the same, make sure you read "The Several Habits of Wildly Successful Twitter Users".

2007/03/13 | permalink | comments (1) | trackbacks (0)

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