Twitter. It's not your big, old blog….
Everybody seems to be talking about Twitter, and a lot of people don't seem to know much about it yet. As a public service, I've been lurking around Twitter and here are my observations so far.
What is Twitter?
Twitter is micro-blogging. Each entry (called a 'tweet') is limited to 140 characters, including any URL you want to post to. This is great for personal updates, which is what Twitter was originally designed for. It is being used for far more than this though.
The next phase of life in Twitter is attracting followers. This can be a little tricky when there are thousands of 'tweets' in any minute of the day, so you can't really just let nature take its course.
There are applications that help you find followers, but the simplest to use initially is Twitter's search engine – search.twitter.com. Search for key words – like your home town (yeah, like Indianapolis!) or hobbies, interests, sports teams, or whatever comes to mind from your life. Click on the results to open the profile, and there will be a 'Follow' button. The 'Follow' button will make sure that every time that person tweets it will show up on your home page.
After a few followers, it starts getting easier to get lost in the tweets. This is where some of the applications come in that are both free to download and easy to use. You wanted a way to organize the chaos, right? Both of these applications let you tweet from them, reply, direct message and filter the incoming tweets.
Tweetdeck (tweetdeck.com)
Columns for the win! There is a column for all of the tweets from people you are following, one for replies to your tweets, one for direct messages, and a couple for searches you can do from Tweetdeck. I use Tweetdeck to get an overall view of the carnage in front of me before I wade in with my mouse and get up to speed on what people have been tweeting while I was away. The columns are filterable, sortable, and you can shift them either left or right.
Twhirl (twirl.org)
Now, if you could take Tweetdeck and have one column with any of those columns available in that column any time you need it, this is what Twhirl does. It also comes with a variety of skin options so it can blend into your desktop instead of occupying the entire desktop like Tweetdeck. I switch to Twhirl when I'm doing other stuff.
A word of caution – don't run both applications at the same time, particularly if you are an active tweeter. Twitter will only allow a certain amount of activity from one person before you will be put in sort of an Internet time-out. If you have both applications running (and the web site open as well) you will end up waiting five minutes to see new tweets or tweet your next post.
Twitter jargon?
Any new technology is incomplete unless there are some incomprehensible terms being thrown around – just so the new people can be immediately pointed at and giggled over. It's the same for Twitter.
Your user name in Twitter will be preceded by an "@" symbol. When you reply to somebody, the tweet starts with @somebody, and Twitter knows who to address it to.
Direct messages start with the letter "D". These are messages that go directly to an individual and are not broadcast to the entire planet. Thankfully. The down side is that both the sender and the recipient have to be following each other, or the message won't go.
When you forward a tweet to your friends, it is called a 'retweet'. The Twitter applications I have reviewed have a button for that somewhere – try hovering over the profile picture.
The method used to group things together is with hashtags. When you're reading a tweet and you see a word that looks like #writers, search for that term (with the hash tag) and the results will be the conversations that included that term. This is how conversations happen between a thousand good friends at the same time. An example yesterday was #queryfail, where writers and authors and editors and agents all submitted horror stories (brief ones) about poor query letters they had received or written. It was a riot! There are many hashtags – use the link above to get the full list.
So what is Twitter good for?
I've seen Twitter used for all kinds of things. A majority of the use is casual updates between friends. "I'm @ the theater now and tix are sold out!"
I've seen tweets that are more like:
* "the plumber is here now and OMG the water!"
* "U git Ur butt home NOW"
* "Delayed at O'Hare. Be there 5:45-ish"
* "Conf room 207B U blockhead"
* "This song is stuck in my head (with URL)"
And then there might be bloggers pointing to URLs about blogging, tweeting the URL for the Twitterverse. Is that how you got to this page? Then it works, right?
If you have photos to share, Twitter has a Twitpic feature (twitter.com/twitpic) that allows uploaded photos to be shared immediately. When you're tweeting about the tickets being sold out you could take a picture of the movie marquis and also ask your friends which other movie you should watch. But this has already come into play as news events happen the pictures are posted and tweeted and the world can see what's going on.
While I've been working on this blog entry, I received a tweet from the editor of the Indianapolis Star News, pointing to a link about bacon written by Jolene Ketzenberger. Bacon from Indiana-raised hogs. Gourmet bacon that is so tempting I'm going to find the market the next time I'm on that side of town. See? It works.
Therefore, the marketing entrepreneurs are grabbing Twitter by the horns and shaking it for all it is worth. In what seems to be some sort of race to the most followers, these are the Twitter users who follow almost everybody hoping that they in turn are followed. Then when they tweet something about, "Hey, look at my blog!" they cross their fingers and hope the world storms a path to their web site.
There are, of course, applications to help people follow everybody else. I won't be downloading and evaluating those applications though – you're on your own. Oh yes, followers count! There are web sites dedicated to counting tweets and followers and ranking Twitter users, and I really don't pay any attention to those, and you don't have to either.
Media types are using Twitter to update the world on conditions in the green room prior to the show, their interview assignments, or a quick note about what time they will be on. Some TV show producers are tweeting their guest list in advance of the program.
Do you have to follow everybody who follows you? Of course not. If I have nothing in common with what is in their profile and their last 10 tweets are nothing of interest, I'm not likely to follow them.
I would rather have 1,000 followers who are genuinely interested in what I'm trying to say than 100,000 followers are are going to get lost in the blizzard of tweets and really couldn't care less about me other than their follower count.
Twitter is also getting recognized as a competitor to Google. If you think about it, all of the daily trends on topics are captured, with links to blogs and articles and photos. There are millions of viewers and users and the data-mining possibilities are really stag
gering. Could you do an analysis of what Twitter users thought of politics in say October 2008? You betcha. And could that be compared to the election results? Why not?
In the event you're a curious person and you want to know who I am following, I'll tell you. Wil Wheaton. Not because he was a kid in a movie or he was in Star Trek on television, but because he has become a successful author on his own merit. I find myself roughly mirroring some elements of his life as I continue to write my manuscript and start thinking about getting a publisher (or self publishing) and all that is involved getting a book to market.
I am finding marketing help, publishing wisdom, and editorial guidance. You can't beat the price for this kind of collaboration! I'm following writer groups, author circles, stuff on audio books, self publishing and all kinds of related topics.
I follow some other Star Trek celebrities just because I can. Did you know LeVar Burton is quitting smoking? Did you know Brent Spiner drives a Prius? Not that you needed to know either of those things.
I also follow some news feeds. The local TV stations are tweeting news headlines, and the Indianapolis Star tweets links to stories of interest. I follow some network news celebrities just for the giggles.
I get tweets from The Onion, because I need to laugh. I get tweets from Paula Poundstone (she's still funny).
I get tweets from friends I've never met in person, but have been corresponding with via the Internet for years.
Then there are those who are gaming the system, and that's just sad.
How do YOU use Twitter?
