TWITTER. You’ve heard of it. If you haven’t, where have you been? And why aren’t you using it? It’s free, it’s easy and it’s becoming a new tool for research for many products and companies you’re probably familiar with.
So what is it? From Wikipedia…
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service, that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as Tweetie, TwitterFon, Twitterrific, Feedalizr or Facebook. For SMS, four gateway numbers are currently available: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, as well as a United Kingdom-based number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email. Twitter had by one measure over 3 million accounts[1] and by another, well over 5 million visitors in September 2008 which was a fivefold increase in a month.
In case that doesn’t make sense…Answer the question…What are you doing?
Why?…well…the simple answer is to stay connected. To whom or to what is up to you.
Here’s an example of how the KTOWN crew is using TWITTER…
When I write a post here, I use the Twitter Updater plugin to post it to my Twitter account…which in turns updates my Facebook page. That’s a very easy way to let everyone know that I have posted soemthing profound…or idiotic.
I have linked my Remember the Milk (RTM) account with my Twitter account to send me reminders of things on my To Do List. I can also post from my Twitter account to RTM. This is very handy.
Ok…so it sounds good useful but is it practical? Sure. As my “Followers” grow with the people I am “Following”, I have access to people much more in-touch and smarter than me. For example, I needed some help finding an open source (free) Project Management software to help run my consulting firm. I asked the question “Anyone know of a good open source Project Management software that is like MS Project?”…and within minuets I had several replies….by the way I use Workbench now. (Thanks LRKNIGHT).
Here are some fellow TWITS that are much smarter than me…
And now Twitter is even being used by companies for research. From TwiTip:
“With millions of Twitterers who mostly are making their tweets public, we are actually building a database of information. Remember that once tweet, those tweets will be archived, probably in multiple places. FriendFeed is an example that immediately comes to my mind.
That could only mean one thing. Twitterers are writing history in real time. As more data become available, and as more people tweet in the future, anyone will be able to fetch historical data from any point of time about any topic.
For instance, forever the 2008 US President election is going to be recorded in Twitter. In the future people would be able to dig into the Twitter accounts of both Barack Obama and John McCain to see the schedules, summaries, opinions, etc. about the campaigns and debates.
A big difference between Twitter and a personal diary is that people are able to interact or witness the interaction live or anytime in the future. Another great thing is, everyone is now able to participate as part of the history and be read by interested people.
If that doesn’t impress you a bit, I don’t know what will…” (author : @hendrylee)
So between the social networking (wave of the future…if not of the present), informational, and research capabilities…tell me again why you aren’t on TWITTER.
And don’t even get me started on using my Blackberry with Twitterberry…let’s just say…the roads are no longer a safe place to be.
