Twitter.com
I been itching to write about Twitter, fast-growing microblogging website few months ago. Like many other social networking users (i.e. Facebook, Myspace, etc.), I did not know what the fuss was. Twitter did not have any unique feature that made me want to hop on its bandwagon. But months passed and after playing with Twitter.com, I realized why it has gained substantial “followings” and growth momentum early 2009.
Twitter.com founders did not define a single purpose on how to use Twitter and you’ll discover numerous ways to use Twitter. It is easy to get started: register your account by providing your name, username, password, and an e-mail address. Then go confirm the registration by clicking on the Twitter e-mail in your inbox. You are set to start tweeting which means to post new updates.
You can then search for your friends via the ‘Find People’ link on the top navigation. Four ways to find people you know: Find on Twitter (type in their name), Find on other networks (logon into Facebook and email accounts), Invite by email (type in friend’s email), and Suggested Users. All self explanatory.
Unlike Facebook where friendship is mutual, Twitter is one way. You actually follow the person and he/she may or may not follow you back. Celebrities and renowned authors tend to follow only their colleagues and not strangers. Most of the times, when you follow an individual, they will follow you back. It is up to you whether you want to follow that person because their tweets (updates) will now be visible in the twitter timeline. So it would not make sense if you follow someone that updates irrelevant posts that does not interest you. On the other hand, if you’re the one that wants to deliver your post (contents) to as much number possible, you want to follow as much twitters and hope they follow you back.
Twitter allows you to post a maximum 140 characters in your tweets. Therefore most tweeters shorten their web links (URL) to fit within the 140 character limit, and Twitter does it automatically for you if you decide to post the URL directly. One major downside to shorten URL is that the end user who clicks on the URL does not know where they are being redirected to because the shortened URL link does not reveal the destination. In the past and even in the month of April, people with bad intentions abuse twitter by sending the twitter user to a malicious virus-infested website, or send self-replicating computer program to deliver spams to twitter accounts. Twitter has been on alert mode looking for worms and other illegal activities.
Desktop programs like Tweetdeck is an alternative to using Twitter on your desktop and not on the website. Tweetdeck is free to download, available for both PC and MAC, and has lot of cool features.
* Tweet directly from TweetDeck
* Stay up to date – view all new tweets in real-time
* Use columns to create your personal dashboard
* Create Groups to easily follow friends, colleagues or other interest groups
* Update Facebook and follow your Facebook friends
* Follow topics in real-time with saved searches
* View @replies and direct messages and manage your conversations
* Never miss an important tweet with notifications
* Share your photos and videos with Twitpic and 12seconds
* And many more Twitter favourites including Stocktwits, Twitscoop and all the most popular URL shortening services
The other popular way to use Twitter is via your mobile device. You can tweet directly from your cell phone by sending in a text message to 40404. You need to configure the mobile setting in your Twitter account to use this. There are over dozen other free programs to tweet on your cellphone (google “Twitter mobile”). For those that have a Facebook account and currently use T-Mobile wireless service, you probably know that you CAN NOT configure Facebook Mobile because T-Mobile is not one of the service providers. I found out that Facebook has a Twitter application where you can connect the two so that Twitter mobile updates will also appear as a Facebook status update. This can be quite useful for T-Mobile users.