So you’ve heard people talking about Twitter…or maybe you heard about the race to 1 million followers between Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) and CNN (@cnnbrk)…or maybe you even saw the headlines when Oprah (@oprah) sent her first “tweet”. Now you want to know all about it and have a million questions. Let’s answer some of those…
Wikipedia defines Twitter as:
“a free 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 characters in length which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers)”
If that doesn’t explain it well, think of it as a short note you used to secretly pass along to a friends in school, or as a quick text message from your cell phone. The main difference in these examples is your message goes to everyone who subscribes to your Twitter updates.
Why should I use it?
The possibilites are endless but they include such ideas as:
- Communicate with friends, family, and co-workers when long emails aren’t necessary
- Get quick answers to questions you might ask from multiple sources
- Catch up on breaking news stories or just find out what’s going on in the world
- Promote ideas or events that are important to you
- Promote your blog posts
Ok, I think I understand. Now, how do I start using it?
You will need to create an account at http://twitter.com/signup (by the way, Twitter is FREE.) You will pick a user name, enter some information and you’re ready to tweet! I also suggest using Twitter’s “Find People” tool to see which of your friends and family are on Twitter so you can connect with them and start tweeting right away!
Where do I go to access Twitter?
Once you have signed up, there are several ways you can access the service; on the web at http://twitter.com, thru a mobile phone device, and even instant messaging platforms. There are also quite a few third-party programs that you can download and use such as Tweetdeck (my favorite), Twhirl, Tweetr and others. If you have an iPhone, there also many free and paid apps available in the iTunes App Store. I am currently comparing Twitterific, Tweetie, and TwitterFon. Lastly, on the IM platforms, I like to use Digsby. I combine all my Twitter accounts, IM accounts, my Facebook account and my email accounts into Digsby and can just use one program to access them all.
Will I be spammed? What about my privacy?
These are questions that come up when I discuss Twitter with friends or family. Twitter is unique in the fact that YOU, the user, control what people may or may not see. If you subscribe to someone’s updates and they aren’t appropriate for you, just un-follow them. Easy!
On the issue of privacy, if you want to use Twitter between a select group of friends and you prefer that no one else see what you discuss, you can hide your updates in the settings so only people you follow and that follow you can see them. If you don’t want to be this extreme, you can also send direct messages to people who follow you and they are hidden from the public.
There’s quite a bit of information here but I hope it helped you feel more comfortable in the Twitter world. Try it out! I’ll be posting plenty of information here on TwitZig so check back often or just subscribe to my feed to get updates as they’re posted.