Article | June 2009 | M.McKennedy
Twitter
What are you doing?
Twitter…by now you obviously have heard of it (or perhaps this is the first time). Tweeting…the act of posting comments, questions, words, links or whatever you feel like,using a limit of 140 characters of less.
I first logged into Twitter and answered the question ‘What are you doing?’ in December of 2008. I have a mere six months experience. The purpose of this article is to shed some light for you first time Tweeterers(??) out there.
Twitter: what the heck is it? It’s Social Networking. Social Networking is a common term used around the likes of Twitter, and Facebook and other online gathering places. Twitter is sort of a chat room type of medium. Uses of Twitter often refer to it as a ‘community’. Twitter asks one simple question “What are you doing?“ People ‘tweet’ about what they feel, what they are doing, where they are going, things they bought, likes, dislikes, things they are selling etc…basically, it’s like a wide open conversation where you can listen when you want to, and respond when you care enough to respond. At first, for me, Twitter did not grab me, and/or I did not grab it. Either way, the two of us (plus the (I assume) millions (I am not doing any research here, just shootin’ off the hip) of users who are out there to “follow”) did not see eye to eye. As a matter of fact, I am still trying to understand what kind of a tool this really is and what possibilities are out there for those of us who use this type of communication on a regular basis. Oh, and then there is the 140 character limit, which really does make it interesting.
Using Twitter this is how you enter a Tweet 
Below are my first two “tweets” (I know, sounds kind of funny…I don’t typically use the word “tweet” when I talk about something I ‘posted’ on Twitter…’posted’ comes out with a little more dignity – or snobbery, but who really cares?)
Logging in to Twitter for the first time5:38 AM Dec 16th, 2008 from web
logging in to twitter for the first time in 2 months 4:24 PM Mar 8th from web
That’s it…that’s all I did with Twitter, but then I got my first few “followers” and the grip began tightening. It started with people from work (you can let Twitter run through your email address book and see if it can match email addresses of your contacts to pre-existing Twitterers?? Tweeters?? Twits???). Soon I began noticing a direct correlation between the subject matter, (and specifically if you use the ‘hash tag‘, more about that in a minute), and how you collect ‘followers’ . ”Followers” are Twitter users that decide for one reason or another that your posts should appear on their Twitter homepage (or iPhone and other hand held computer devices). I have a mere 60 followers at the time of writing this article, but the growth rate is high, and if you pay attention to what, (and how) other people are saying you can figure out how to gather more followers rapidly. I am not sure if this is a common goal amongst all Twitter users but getting people to follow you seems like part of the game. You can follow bands, for example @MetricBand, or presidents @BarackObama. There is an entire directory of folks to follow called WeFollow. If you are going to mention a fellow Twitter user you use the format @username, for example: I am @mmckennedy.
The “hash tag” allow users to ‘tag’ their posts so people with similar interests can easily search for the subject they are interested in. The hash tag uses this format #subject. For example: if I wanted to post a photograph that I was particularly proud of I could post something like, “picturesque scenic Vermont vista photograph – take a look http://somelink – #photography“. This way, if it’s photography that someone is interested in, they can search Twitter for the hash tag #photography. If the photo was shot in Vermont. I would throw in the hash tag #VT too.
Retweeting: this is when someone thinks, “hey, this is worth saying to all of my followers”. For example: say I “tweeted” (still seems silly to type that out) “first 5 people to show up to (my store) in the next 1/2 hr. that mention Twitter get 20% off anything in the store” – and you thought this was something that should be passed around you would ‘tweet’ “RT @mmckennedy first 5 people to show up to (my store) in the next 1/2 hr. that mention Twitter get 20% off anything in the store” (that leaves 11 characters left out of a possible 140). Can you see the power in that for a business? Not only did my initial message go to my followers but it also got send by you to all of your followers, it opens up a whole new audience with the potential for serious exponential growth!
TweetDeck - click for a larger view
I am not sure if Twitter will eventually become another MySpace (does anyone really use MySpace anymore?) or if something else will come along and replace it all together but it seems that this social networking community has become a new communication tool for many or us, and many, many more to come. Sharing photos, links, news, as well as personal thoughts and ideas is just a few buttons away these days. Twitter on the iPhone, Twitter for the xBox 360, Twitterberry (for the BlackBerry), TweetDeck (a way to post to both Facebook and Twitter in one shot plus other functionality), TweetLater (if you need to schedule your Tweets), TwitPic (the word ‘pic’ probably says enough) and on and on it continues to grow.
There much more going on with Twitter than I have time to write about. Twitter even has functionality I haven’t even touched on (you can directly reply to people, saved frequent searches, customize your homepage and more). Since it is free you might as well check it out. Everyone was a beginner Twitter user at one point or another. That is why I figured that a simple Twitter tutorial or “how to use Twitter” page with descriptions of the terminology and their uses would be helpful. So here you go.
If you are still trying to decide if you want to try Twitter, check out the Twitter public timeline to see what people are saying right now! Happy tweeting!
