We Are All a-Twitter

If you've never heard of Twitter or don't understand what the big deal is, read on ... enlightenment awaits!

What is Twitter?
Twitter is micro-blogging, that is, you answer the question "what are you doing?" in 140 characters or less. OK, it sounds pretty geeky, but it is really lots of fun.

Sometimes tweets (what Twitter posts are called) can be pretty banal. But, when there was an earthquake out in California, how did word get out? CNN? Fox News? Internet? Nope. Tweets posted through Twitter beat them all by a couple of hours.

There was a Twitter contest to see who could get to 1million followers first, Ashton Kutcher or CNN Breaking News and Ashton Kutcher won. Though, for news, I prefer to follow The Onion, American's Finest News Source.

And, my favourite, Brett Spinner tweeted a whole adventure leading up to the premiere of the new Star Wars movie. It was a ripper!

How Do I Use Twitter?
There are a couple of ways ...

1. Sign up on-line: Go to the Twitter site and set up an account. As with most networking sites, you can then find other friends and start to follow them (see their tweets).
2. On your phone option #1: If you live in one of the 'special' countries (US, UK and India), then you can set up your mobile phone so that you get the tweets from those you follow sent to you as an SMS
   
3. On your phone option #2: If you have an iPhone, or other smart phone with internet access, there are a number of applications that you can download to make sending and reading tweets easier. I've used Twitterlator and am looking at trying TwitterFon. Both of these apps, and more, are available from the App Store
   
4. On the web: I use Firefox as my browser and downloaded TwitterFox which logs into Twitter as me when I'm online and pops up a window with any tweets that my friends have sent
   

Anyone that I don't know or who has a marketing focus also gets blocked from following me (seeing my tweets) straight away. I also block anyone who posts inane tweets. Life is too short for boring tweets. Depending on how public you want your presence on Twitter to be, you can choose who to follow and, more importantly, who can follow you.

There are plenty of interesting things happening in Twitter. Give it a go!