How do you use Twitter?
Twitter is a great web application. It’s simply a communication tool, but due to it’s flexibility it can be used in so many different ways; from keeping in touch with friends, tracking industry peers or for use as a marketing tool.
Twitter logo
I had created a Twitter account a few months ago, but that was short lived as I found it no better than using Facebook, except that everyone I knew already had an account with Facebook and not with Twitter. As I found various websites starting integrating Twitter feeds, tweets, into their layouts and more people began speaking about Twitter I decided to give it another go.
Thinking that when I had cancelled my previous account my information was gone for good I tried to recreate an account using the same email address I had used previously. It was then that I was greeted with a message saying that I could reinstate my previous account, which I did, though it might take up to 24 hours for all the data to be retrieved.
So once the account was back to normal I started to think about how I would use Twitter. It is no Facebook alternative, it simply doesn’t have the same volume of people I ‘know’. It’s also no alternative for instant messaging due to the unreliability problems Twitter faced at the time, and the limit of sending and receiving tweets using Twitterfox, my Twitter client of choice.
Therefore I decided to use it as a means of keeping up-to-date with the what’s going on in the web industry. I have managed to find quite a few web authorities on Twitter; Paul Boag, Jeremy Keith, John Oxton, Jonathan Snook, Ryan Carson and Kevin Rose to name a few. People who would usually be inaccessible to me. Whilst a large proportion of the tweets that occur on Twitter are snapshots of a person’s day, on occassion topics are raised which encourage debate or at least discourse. Whereas blog articles take time and effort to write, tweets take seconds and are effortless and are more accessible for responding to.
So how do you use Twitter?
3 comments to “How do you use Twitter?”
Twitter is one of those “web 2.0″ apps that you either get (and love) or just can’t quite get the hang of.
I’d love to be writing continually funny, irreverent and sometimes insightful tweets but I generally can’t think of anything say!
What’s your Twiiter name?
Graf1771 at 5.11 pm
on Wednesday 24th September 2008
I find exactly the same. The number of different web apps I sign up to only to be disappointed. Thankfully Twitter is so plain and simple that it doesn’t feel like a task in itself ‘tweeting’.
My Twitter name is @smallinson and you can find me at http://twitter.com/smallinson
Scott at 7.29 pm
on Wednesday 24th September 2008
Hey Scott!
I use Twitter to micro-blog, as said before - it’s easier than sitting and writing a post, and it’s even easier and faster to read.
You can use http://www.twitterfeed.com/ to update your Twitter account automatically with every post on your blog, every work published to your portfolio, etc.
You can even use it to sync between your Facebook status and your Twitter accound (Both Ways).
For me, Twitter is basically a marketing tool - a bit more personal than others. And I think that’s what I like so much about is!
Tweets :-)
@zivtzi
Ziv Meltzer at 8.29 pm
on Wednesday 24th September 2008