Tweet Tweet…Are You on Twitter?
Twitter is fast gaining popularity on the internet now. It’s being used by a lot of people ranging from politicians to actors to musicians to business people to IT people to just regular everyday people.
What makes Twitter so popular? I think it’s because it is a very simple application that is easily accessible and easy to use to get and share information.
So what exactly is Twitter? Here is a definition from Wikipedia:
Twitter is a 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 bytes in length. Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them.
“What are you doing?” is the question being asked by Twitter. If you have information you want to share, you can share it in 140 characters or less without needing to elaborate on it so much. If you need to elaborate, you could always use a blog for that.
Users follow other users, usually referred to as tweeple or tweeps, whom they share similar interests. You can follow people without needing them to follow you back. The reason that others may not follow you back may vary from one person to another. For celebrities, I’d probably say their reason is they don’t really need to know updates from thousands of people’s lives every second of the day.
You could still interact with anyone even if they don’t follow you (as long as they don’t block you) by simply sending them a message or what is known as an @ reply. Twitter has made it possible to connect and get to know people in whole new different way.
Personally, I use Twitter to learn information from people in the IT industry. I learn new things everyday through reading their tweets. Usually their tweets would include links to very useful and helpful articles. If I like what they tweet, I retweet them to my followers. And if anyone likes what I tweet or retweet, they would do the same, and it goes on and on.
To make my Twitter experience more productive, I use the Tweet Deck application. It allows me to organize the updates I receive into separate columns so I could easily scan through them to find the information I could use, and retweet or reply to messages easily.
Even if you’re not in front of a computer, you could still use Twitter through your phone by SMS or mobile internet.
There’s a lot more to the Twitter community, or Twitterverse as some would call it. If you’re still not on it, go sign up now. I don’t think you’ll regret it.
Add me up if you like: @AnnaSaldivar.
Tech-Life in Pink 