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Anyone tweat?


Mary Hartman

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I don't get it. I miss the allure of it. And I'm in communications, social networking is all the rage but tweeting? Just failing to find a real use for it. Enlighten me!

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I had twitter for about a month before I deleted it.

Did the same thing with my facebook account.

You just reach point where social networking sites such as twitter, facebook, or myspace are nothing but a waste of time.

I'll use AIM, emails and my cellular phone to keep in touch with people.

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It isn't for everyone.

It's popular because it's fun. To me that's the only reason it needs.

By Michael Muchmore

Twitter's overnight Internet fame stems from one simple question: "What are you doing?" You have 140 characters of text to answer, and as soon as you hit Update, the site's millions of users can see what you're up to. This small idea has blossomed into a hugely popular phenomenon, with its users covering the entire Earth, developers creating scores of helper apps for it, and a raft of imitation sites. This is the "social-networking and microblogging" site where you can read fascinating and mundane quick takes such as "ate a piece of cherry pie" or "just had a great workout." But despite the service's seemingly trivial function, which causes many to snub it and can at times make it akin to listening to other peoples' cell-phone conversations, Twitter fills a gap left by other forms of communication.

PCMAG

So I finally gave in and started using Twitter this past weekend (if you're on Twitter, follow me at twitter.com/bobcaswell). What is Twitter? It's a mix of instant messaging, email, Facebook, and text messaging. It's a network of users that follow each other. Here's how it works:

It's quick and easy to sign up; you just need a username, password, and email address. Once in, you can have it scan your email contacts to see if you know anyone already using Twitter. Or, it allows you to quickly send invitations to anyone you'd like. One way or another, you need some friends before getting started. The whole point of Twitter is to answer the question "What are you doing?" in 140 characters are less. Your friends instantaneously see a trail of your answers, and you see a feed of their latest answers as well.

If none of your real life friends are using Twitter (which is mostly the case for me), you can start making friends by following anyone who seems interesting. For me, it wasn't hard to quickly find and follow 150 or so pseudo- friends (that is, people who I already know from their blogging online even if I don't know them in person). And each time you add someone to your following list, they get an email from you. If you don't know where to start to find friends, check out the Twitter public timeline, which is a running list of all "tweets" (messages) updated every four minutes.

Some people like to keep their following list limited and won't follow you just because you follow them (which is just fine). But others will add you as a friend (i.e., follow you) after you begin following them (like entrepreneurship celebrity Guy Kawasaki who added me within minutes of me adding him). So, in short, Twitter relationships can be summed up as follows:

* I can follow you, and you can follow me.

* I can follow you and you don't follow me.

* You can follow me, and I don't follow you.

Twitter can also be setup easily for your cellphone. In fact, that's what it's designed for (the tweet limit of 140 characters is so that it works well with cellphone text messaging). This makes for a lot of tweets that read something like, "bored, waiting in line at…"

So what's the purpose of Twitter? The Twitter FAQ states it as, "Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected." But from what I've seen, people use it more for other reasons. Marshall Kirkpatrick explains how he uses it to find the latest breaking tech stories. NBC, CBS, ABC Family and MTV are using it as a marketing platform. And of the 150 friends I'm following so far? A good chunk seem to use it almost exclusively for alerting everyone when they have a new post on their blog.

Not that there's anything wrong with any of these uses, mind you. In fact, I'm inclined to be one of the users that adds most anyone who either seems at least mildly interesting or has already added me. I don't think Twitter should be confused for email (i.e., a service where you generally scan/read every message). I'm inclined to use it as more of a zeitgeist or snapshot of the latest happenings of those I follow. Overall, I like it and will likely contribute / check others' contributions frequently.

But it's interesting for me to see how some have already claimed it to be a wasteful addiction that should be bridled. Well, true, but couldn't that be said of anything used in excess? If you need it, here's a 12-step program for email addicts that can just as easily be applied to any technology addiction. Incidentally, Twitter is already popular enough to have had a third party (Twitterholic) create a list of the top 100 most popular Twitter users.

Overall, I think I like Twitter. Is it a waste of time? Maybe. Is it useful? Maybe. However you'd like to classify it, it's at least an interesting experiment in communication.

TechConsumer

http://www.techconsumer.com/2008/02/12/twi...emely-valuable/

Twitter has popularized the concept of microblogging, the use of cell phones, instant messages, and e-mail to post streams of short blog posts. Twitter is part of Business Exchange, suggested by Tom Giles. This topic contains 4,150 news and 5,128 blog items.

BusinessWeek.Com

http://bx.businessweek.com/twitter/most-ac...p;kw=Twittering

Once again. If you have a hard time keeping up with a small social networking site? Twitter will drive you nuts :lol:

I like it because it's very lightweight, very mobile, and you can market to millions in a few seconds.

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I find Twitter sooo boring. Myspace and Facebook are more enjoyable.

I belong to facebook. I just find it extremely boring. They may have fixed the security holes by now I dunno. If I enjoyed it I'd be in it too. I guess it's what you get used to and I started in twitter when it first started.

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I find Twitter sooo boring. Myspace and Facebook are more enjoyable.

MySpace sucks i.m.o. where I live, the people that have MySpace are kids in middle school and shit. then when you get to high school, you use Facebook. But yes spats, I concur. Twitter is boring.

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I haven't used Twitter and don't know a whole lot about it.

I used to kind of keep an open Word document open and just type random thoughts etc, kind of like a journal. I would usually delete it after I was done, sometimes regretfully.

I think journals are beneficial for everyone, however I am not sure making it public is the best thing. It would clearly influence what you actually write, unless you just absolutely do not care. There are people like that, but I am not one of them, and I would think most people feel the same way.

But like I said, a journal is a very helpful tool and I think that people should get in the habit of doing it. I wish I could do it all the time but I get lazy.

I make a lot of lists and it helps me remember things I need to remember. I am much more organized that way.

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It really isn't meant to write anything significant like a journal. But let's say you wanna let your kids and family know your stuck in traffic on I-90....log on with phone and say "ARRRGGGG." It's very mobile which Is one reason the younger crowd like it. Oddly enough teens buy more junk than parents do.

You have MS-Word to do a journal with.It may go by the wayside like many other very light apps.

Only time will tell. Give it a year :blush:

It's really no different than bulletins in MySpace. Only without all the other things added on. They say there's something similar to it in Facebook however I'm not a huge fan of facebook so I dunno.

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I have a twitter account, but don't use it much.

Most of my friends are on facebook.

I suppose it depends on where most of the people in your circle socialize.

To me, twitter is boring. Facebook is where it's at because that is where most of my friends are.

Besides, facebook has Farmtown. lol

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I have a twitter account, but don't use it much.

Most of my friends are on facebook.

I suppose it depends on where most of the people in your circle socialize.

To me, twitter is boring. Facebook is where it's at because that is where most of my friends are.

Besides, facebook has Farmtown. lol

Haha right on man.

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I personally think its stupid because it is just a rip off of the Facebook status bar. I have seen Twitter and I am sticking with Facebook.

I also see Twitter as a ripoff of the Facebook status bar. For that reason I don't have a Twitter account.

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