Brian the Education Geek writes an occasional blog with observations about life, geek stuff, politics, and just whatever strikes his fancy.
Many of you out there in Readerland may remember the launch of the social media service known as Twitter back in August 2006. The idea was to go to www.twitter.com and make yourself a Twitter account, and have your friends to the same. You'd then tell Twitter that you want follow your friends' accounts, and they would presumably tell Twitter that they want to follow your account. This would allow you to send text messages to your friends. Known as tweets, these messages could only be 140 characters or less in length, and could only be viewed at the aforementioned web page, www.twitter.com. You couldn't set it up to send or receive your tweets as SMS text messages on your cell phone, you couldn't send pictures or videos to each other, only text--and worst of all, the service itself suffered major outages during those first few months. Not surprisingly, many social media pundits and computer users alike were scratching their heads, asking, "What's the point?"
And that was then. Nowadays, with the advent of full-on social media sites like Facebook, SecondLife, and FourSquare, many computer users have all but forgotten about Twitter. Make no mistake, I was one of them! I figured if I wanted to text-message my friends, I could just use my cell phone...and if I REALLY wanted to communicate with my friends en masse, I could just use Facebook.
But about a month ago, on a lazy afternoon during spring break, I found myself sitting at my computer (try not to faint, everyone) wondering if Twitter, now in its fifth year of existence, could possibly still be that useless or irrelevant. So I did a little research, and what I found was nothing short of astonishing! I'm now an avid Twitter user, at home and at work; Twitter is now a mission-critical part of both. Why the change of heart? Read on!
WHO USES TWITTER? THE ANSWER MAY SURPRISE YOU...
I'll skip right to the crux of what I've found with Twitter: sending text messages to your friends represents only the slightest fraction of Twitter's true potential. Why? The answer lies with who uses Twitter these days. No longer is Twitter relegated merely to individuals; now Twitter is used by almost every major company, organization, government entity, and media source on planet Earth. Most people think of Twitter in terms of following their friends, in order to get information and news from them. But it's not just your friends that have news to share; everyone else does too! For starters, celebrities have news to share. Actors, musicians, authors, comedians, politicians, pro atheletes, corporate CEOs and CFOs, just about everybody who's anybody has a Twitter account. All you have to do is go into your own Twitter account (again, at www.twitter.com) , tell it to follow the people you're interested in, and viola! You get all the latest dirt on what they're doing, when, and why. It's not at all uncommon for a given celebrity's Twitter followers to find out about the goings-on of their favorite public figures faster than the news agencies themselves find out!
It doesn't stop there. Those news agencies I just referred to? Yeah...they have Twitter accounts too! Local newsrooms like 9News and MyFoxDenver. National TV news stations like CBS News, NBC News, and NPR. World news sources like Reuters, the Associated Press, and Al Jazeera. News magazines and newspapers like the Washington Post, the New York Times, TMZ and E! Online (yes, gossip counts as news too!!). They all have Twitter accounts, and every developing story that any of these guys are working comes through as a tweet. Here's an example that just popped up two minutes ago while I was writing this blog article: "The FBI has identified the suspect in the Southwest Plaza Mall attempted bombing as Earl Albert Moore." (That came straight from the news desk of 9News.) Three minutes ago, I didn't know that. Nobody knew that, except for the FBI. But I know it now, and I didn't have to wait until the 5:00PM newscast on TV to find out. (Which is a good thing, because I do not have time for TV news!) My favorite news source in Twitter is BreakingNews, which aggregates the most pertinent news from all the major world new providers into their own Twitter stream, so I don't have to follow all of them; following BreakingNews gets me most of the news I want right there.
But, you say, I don't really care about the news per se; what I really want is information and developing news in my own areas of interest. No problem; Twitter's got you covered there too. Let's rap off a few hobbies or interests: geek stuff. Woodworking. Cars and auto racing. Baseball, or any other sport you can think of. Jewelry crafting. Sewing and quilting. Aircraft and aviation. What do all these hobbies and interests have in common? Two things: a) there's at least one magazine, web site, or television show dedicated to news information about that hobby or interest; b) each of these entities has a Twitter account. Guaranteed. My wife is watching the TV show NCIS in the next room; news and pertinent info about that show, or any other, is merely a Twitter follow away. In my case, it's nerd web sites and magazines that I'm most likely to follow--sites like Engadget, Gizmodo, TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog), PC Magazine, etc. I don't wait for new articles and headlines from these sites; those articles and headlines come to me, in real time, through Twitter.
But, you say, I don't just want news headlines, I want the actual articles! I want more information on a given topic than a mere 140 characters can give. No problem; most tweets nowadays (or at least, most of the tweets I see) contain web links to articles or other information about that tweet. Just click on the web link, and a new web browser window or tab will open on your computer with all the information on the tweet that you'd ever want. When you're done reading, just go back to the www.twitter.com web page, and sally forth to the next tweet. Here's another interesting feature of Twitter: if you see a tweet that you think might be of interest to those who are following you on Twitter, you can retweet that tweet, so that it shows up in your friends' Twitter accounts as well. I have a couple of really funny comedians who have their own Youtube shows, and when I get a funny tweet from them, I almost always retweet it. Example from a few seconds ago, from a guy named Ray William Johnson: "I've invented a surefire rehab system, based on doing the opposite of everything Lindsay Lohan does." Love it!
Anything that can possibly be of interest to you can likely be followed on Twitter, in some way, shape or form. For example, it's usually a pretty good idea to follow your employer on Twitter. My wife works for the McAfee division of Intel Corporation, and she follows both of them on Twitter. It never hurts your corporate "street cred" to bring up some late-breaking piece of news in a meeting or a lunch that only you know about, because it's so recent that only the company's Twitter followers are likely to have heard about it. Another thing: I drive down a major highway to get to work every day, and thanks to Twitter, I always know the traffic conditions. Similarly, the town I live in has its own Twitter account, so I always know which local roads are being affected by road construction. Many local news agencies have separate Twitter accounts dedicated solely to weather information, and I follow these not only for my own location, but for the cities where my friends and loved ones live as well. Never hurts to know what the weather is like for my peeps, especially these last couple of weeks. (Lately the term Tornado Alley seems to cover most of the nation!)
TWITTER: IT'S NOT JUST FOR THE WEB ANY MORE
So far, we've been talking about the changing face of who uses Twitter, and how its used. But there's another factor that's been rapidly increasing Twitter's usefulness: the advent of Twitter applications for computers and mobile devices. No longer do you need to be in front of your computer, staring at the web page www.twitter.com, to see your tweets; you can now download programs for your computer (Mac or PC) that are dedicated to providing your tweets directly to your desktop. No web browser required. You just go to the program's web page, download the program, install it on your computer, and give it your Twitter username and password. The one I use and would recommend is called TweetDeck, at www. tweetdeck.com. There are versions for both Mac and PC, and the program's user interface is highly capable yet highly user-friendly. The advantage of TweetDeck or any of the other good Twitter programs out there is that they notify you when a new tweet comes in, so you don't have to have your web browser running to see when new tweets arrive. If you don't use TweetDeck, then make sure that whichever program you do decide on comes from a reputable company, and isn't just some spyware or malware program.
There are also Twitter applications for PDA cell phones, like an Apple iPhone or an Android phone like a Motorola Droid or an HTC Evo 4G. The caveat here is that in order to use them, your cell phone account has to have a data plan, which is an additional cost per month over the cost of the voice plan. If you do have a PDA phone with a data plan, it's awfully nice to get your Twitter feed directly on your phone; no matter where you are, you're always up to the minute with Twitter. There are even Twitter applications for those newfangled pad devices, like the Apple iPad and Android pads like the Motorola Xoom.
SO--WHAT'S THE CATCH?
The Twitter service is pretty bulltproof, and doesn't generally carry with it the security and privacy pitfalls that are all too common with other social media sites like Facebook. But there are a few things to watch out for:
--overtweeters: overtweeters are the ones who feel the need to post a tweet every 15 minutes or 10 minutes or whatever. Following an overtweeting Twitter account is fine, so long as all the tweets that come through are useful or interesting or pertinent; the caveat is that they hardly ever are. People and entities that overtweet usually do so because they subconsciously see Twitter merely as an extension of their own (wandering and unfocused) mind. There's no limit to the number of tweets you can receive in Twitter, but you'll soon learn that your patience definitely has limits. Unfollow overtweeters if you need to; Lord knows I've done it.
--impostors: when you identify someone you want to follow and you search on that name in the Who To Follow section of www.twitter.com, be sure that the person or entity you choose is the actual one that you want. Twitter doesn't seem to police their accounts very well, so impostors are common. Example: remember earlier how I said I follow PC Magazine? Well, what I didn't tell you was that when I searched on PC Magazine on the Twitter site, I found 4 impostors that I had to sift through before I found the actual PC magazine. Twitter account holders can set up a picture for their account, known as a profile picture, that other Twitter users see when they search on them or when they receive tweets from them. Three of these four PC Magazine impostors' profile pictures were the actual red PC Magazine logo that we all know, and again Twitter doesn't seem to have a problem with this. So be careful; it may help to look up the slogan used by the entity you're trying to follow, and then choose the Twitter account that has that slogan. (The PC Magazine slogan is "The independent guide to technology since 1982," so that's the one I chose, and it was the actual PC Magazine.) If you do follow someone and it becomes clear that they're an impostor, simply unfollow them and try again.
--tweets that don't get to the point: this is less a pitfall than it is an annoyance. Some Twitter entities do their tweets by typing long-drawn-out headlines that don't fit inside the 140-character limit. These tweets usually include a web link to the rest of the headline, and/or to the actual article. You may be OK with this, but it drives me nuts; 140 characters is enough for even a novice writer to make a complete headline, plus have room for a web link to the article. Failure to do so is a sign of laziness on the part of the Twitter entity in question IMHO, so if you see this, feel free to unfollow them. If that Twitter entity is something you really want to follow, though, then you're out of luck; its their way or the highway. TMZ does this, but since they're my best source of gossip news, I pretty much have to deal with it!
--making your voice heard: when you follow a person or entity in Twitter, often the natural tendency is to expect them to follow you in return. Your friends may do this, but it's unlikely that anyone else will. Remember, celebrities and companies and other public Twitter entities have literally hundreds or even thousands of followers; there's no possible way that they could follow all these people in return. If they did, they'd probably have tens or hundreds of thousands of tweets to deal with, and they obviously would not have time to read them all. Even if they hired interns or staff to assist them, there's no way they'd be able to keep up. The general rule that I go by is that the more famous and publicly-known the Twitter entity, the less likely that they'll follow you, or even acknowledge when you reply to one of their tweets. Expect the information flow from such entities to be one-way, them to you.
SUMMATION
So whenever you get some good quality time with your computer, I would surf out to www.twitter.com and set up your Twitter account. Then follow the web sites or companies or TV shows or whatever that you'd like to get news and information about, and away you go! You may just find that the Twitter service you forgot all about is something that you can't live without.
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