When I offered to write this blog for my sister, Hunee, I don't think I knew what I was getting into. "The Many Uses of Twitter." I could write a whole wiki on this. Let's start with some basics, then I'll leave you with some teasers of the more advanced features.
If you don't already know(you need to keep up!), Twitter is a microblogging community. What this means is that you are given a very small space(140 characters) to say what ever you want and the community and your friends can respond to it. This also makes twitter a great place for conversation, because no one can get too long winded in an answer. It forces a give and take style of communication, which is very healthy.
Now if we look a little beyond the blogging aspect and the conversation aspect, you can begin to see so much more. Because of the large community, it's a great place to poll people for answers, or to seek help if you are in a dilemma. I've gotten just over 600 followers, so if I'm doing some research, as I was the other night, answers start coming fast. I sent out a short survey: "What is your blog about?" Within seconds answers started coming to me. I ended up with two pages of answers from people that range from close friends, to people that I had never really spoken to. Needless to say that was more than I expected and I got a very good idea of what the casual blogger writes about.
If we want to take Twitter a step further, we can use other websites and applications to enhance it via it's open API. Here's a short bullet list of some of the communities favorites:
- Twitterfeed - Let's you plug any RSS feed in, and then it autoposts these entries every so often.
- Twitpic - Allows you to share photos with your Twitter friends.
- Tweeterboard - Shows you who's most active in the Twitterverse.
- Tweetstats - Allows you to see personal statics about your usage.
- Twitterfone - Still very beta, but allows you to call an 800 number and talk, it records the message and then attempts to transcribe it as a tweet.
There are literally hundreds of programs like this that can help you enhance your twitter experience and build upon the way you use this very simple site.
You can post tweets via the web interface, IM, SMS, and through many third party client programs. Twitter is very versatile, and simplistic in use, making it easy for anyone to use.
Twitter can be used to promote things. Take, for example, my current writing project, Twitter Travels, funded for the last 2 months almost entirely by Twitter users(or Twits). Many people use Twitter for blog and project promotion, but to do only that would be limiting yourself greatly.
On another note, Twits are trying very hard to make this online community a real life community. Check out Greg Barnett's TweetUpLA, which I was privilegedenough to be able to attend. It was a great success and he's going to be doing another in October.
So as I said, I could go on about this forever, but I think this is enough for one blog post. Maybe in a few days Hunee will let me do a sequel to cover all the many things I could not here.
Cheers,
Jack Lhasa
Jack Lhasa is a traveling writer, currently traveling the state of California. He writes for Twitter Travels, as well as Loki Listens. Jack Lhasa does many, many guest blogs and public appearances(Like I'm a superstar, right?). Jack is always willing to meet you for a drink or lunch if you're close by.
