Twitter me this, Twitter me that

Lately I’ve seen a lot of people wondering about Twitter on their Facebook profiles.  My first experience with Twitter last year didn’t impress me much, but the more I’ve used it lately, the more I like it.  Since bullet points are such a hit on blogs, I’ll try to keep your focus…

What is twitter?

• Twitter is “microblogging” limited to 140 characters per post
• People are “followed” just as they’re “friend”ed on facebook
• “Follow”ing is one-way: I follow Shaq, but he doesn’t have to follow me
  • thus follow athletes, celebrities, musicians, news, nerds, etc
• Message someone by preceding their name with “@”
  • the message is understood to be intended for that person
  • still a public post that everyone can see
  • e.g. tweet: “@jimgaffigan you’re a riot!”
• Directly message someone so no one else can read it (like an e-mail)
  • e.g. tweet: “d @RyanSeacrest out!”
• Short URLs are common b/c most web site addresses > 140 chars
  • e.g. http://bit.ly/SbqE8
• Any tweet can be starred and will be saved under your Favorites link
• You like someones tweet, so you “retweet” it by preceding it with “RT”
  • your followers will see it
  • give credit to the original author
  • e.g. I tweeted: “RT @DaveHatter: “The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails” – John Maxwell”
• Include a “#” before a term to label it under that “topic“ 
  • good for grouping tweets allowing for better searches
  • e.g. @espndev tweeted: “Nevertheless; The #Bengals Will Win The Super Bowl!”
• Twitter Search – great way to find out what’s going on

Plus, I think it’s not just the “tweet”ing that’s fun, it’s the 3rd party applications that interact with it which are neat too.

Third Party Application examples:

• WeFollow - organizes the most popular users into categories
• Cursebird - real-time feed of people cursing on Twitter (hilarious!)
• TweetDeck – most popular desktop app for Twitter (+Facebook)
• Twitter Fan Wiki – a pretty thorough list of apps

My suggestions for getting your tweet on:

• Just try it out!
• This is very public, so don’t post anything you’ll regret!
• Start slowly – following a ton of people may overwhelm or annoy you!
• Try it mobile – I use and really enjoy the free iPhone app TwitterFon
• Tweet cool places, foods, facts, etc and not your boring, daily activities
• Follow me and let me know what you think!