Twitter for the Idiot!
So I know it took me a little while to finally get around to writing the first of these, but it’s been a busy time down here… so bare with me!
Today, we’re looking at Twitter… and I cannot stress enough how much I think some of my friends should read this piece.
First of all, let’s address the basics of what Twitter actually is.
I’ll assume that you all know what a blog is, the regular journal like entry of information, whether it be personal, or to do with a topic. With Twitter, you get the chance to blog all those tiny thoughts you get during the day that, while you feel are incredibly interesting, just do not make an entire blog post.
For example, my favorite example is when I hit the shopping center during what I end up finding out to be school holidays. Random thoughts along the line of
Bloody school kids… should lock them all up!
inevitably end up surfing through my mind. But you might have other thoughts, on a variety of issues that you encounter.
Twitter provides you with several ways for you to express such an opinion. My favorite is the fact that I can SMS in my post, wherever I am. However you can also do it via your own Twitter website, or using a desktop application.
Your Twitter feed - as the blog like stream of consciousness is called - can be followed by your friends and, in my case, fans (yes, I have them…). They can keep up to date with whatever you choose to put up there.
However, and here is the incentive for those who are not real geeks or those without the desire to chronicle their life online (or those simply too lazy). Twitter can realistically act as a free SMS tool, and a mass SMS tool at that.
Let’s explain.
Let us pretend for a moment that I live in San Francisco, and actually can claim Tom Merritt, Veronica Belmont and Rafe Needleman as my friends. Not only would I be following their messages on Twitter, but they would be following mine.
And, let us pretend that I was having a birthday party, or going to a pub that night. I would, on my Twitter feed, post this fact and say that people should meet me there at, say, 8!
Can you see where this leads? Instead of sending out copious amounts of the same SMS to all my friends, wasting valuable credit or cash, all I need do is hop on my computer, and type out my plan.
Though it started off as a mini-blogging tool, it has morphed itself in to a mass-communication tool.
The greatest example of that has been the recent Californian fires, and you can read all about that in my earlier post here.
Now as the rain starts to fall again, I’ll leave you with just a few links. First of all, obviously, Twitter.com. Secondly, if you want to know who is hot in the world of Twitter, check out TwitterPoster.com. This page, using each Twitterer’s profile image, shows you by size who has the most amount of fans. And lastly, for those who would like, my twitter page.
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Twitter is as much of a communication tool as gum is a source of nutrition. Reality is, that it feeds the ego of an increasingly disconnected and increasingly connection hungry society. Twitting does not give you friends or (as it claims) it gives you stalkers and voyeurs - who ultimately are following what you (/or anyone else who uses it), soley because it gives them a kick …much like eavesdropping at a cafe on mindless, meaningless exchange, or seeing your first naked person strolling across their living room in the window of your first apartment in New York City.
Have much more to say on this…but will save it for elsewhere…check out my post about Twitter, inspired by the New York Time article yesterday…at The Lohasian (http://www.thelohasian.com)