Micro-blogging: A Tweet Life

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Twitter, the website created by Jack Dorsey, is the most popular micro blogging platform with over a million users called twiterrers. It caters to people who want to communicate, stay connected and be updated with friends, family and co-workers even with the mundane things to world-breaking news- in 140 characters!

It basically allows you to log in and register and you are good to go (once you access the homepage, you’ll easily find the join tab). A lot of social networking websites have followed in twitter’s footsteps like Facebook (more about this later). Once you are registered, you can do quick posts or tweets, anywhere and anytime, that your friends, family, and the rest of the world can follow- while eating escargot, sipping a Pinot Noir, even during Pres. Obama’s speech like what Sen. Claire McCaskill did.

The site also allows you to send tweets using your mobile phone by using a 3^rd party twitter application like TwitterMobile. Unfortunately, only countries like Canada, the United States, and India can take advantage of this service. When sending tweets via mobile phone to your followers (meaning friends in tweetlandia), you have to use the @ symbol + their nickname. An example of a tweet sent thru SMS would be: @marie just got home. Always remember that a tweet must not exceed 140 characters so keep it simple and straight to the point.

There are a lot of advantages in using twitter. Aside from enabling friends and families to keep track of one another by constantly keeping everybody informed; it is also a way for subscribers and followers to know bloggers and webmasters, as what you can see in www.davesaunders.net and www.yoursocialbrand.com. Needless to say it brings more traffic to your website and it can help you advertise your site’s content and products.

Tweets can also be synchronized with Facebook updates to engage both communities at once. This video shows how to import Twitter status into Facebook.

Based on my experience and other people who have been using Twitter for quite some time, the following is just a quick summary of what the site can do for you:

1. For headhunters, all they need to do is send out or post a tweet asking for recommendations.

2. For bloggers who runs out of ideas what their next blog would be, they can ask their subscribers to give them a feedback. Like for a chef like me, I can ask my followers what they want me to write about next.

3. It enables people who are: like-minded, from socially-different strata, to “network”, to establish relationships for future benefits.

4. Allows you to make real-time commentary on things that interest or irritate the hell out of you.

5. Used as a time-management tool. It can keep track of what you have been doing daily.

6. Can be utilized to keep in touch with your employees. Instead of using emails, a chef who is on the field can send a tweet to his kitchen crew over the web, using an IM or thru SMS. But a lot of employers prefer other intranet programs over twitter (more about this later).

We may think that even if the site has a large number of followers, there are still a few who refuse to see its advantages. A lot of these people think that using social media sites like Twitter allows people to become too independent on technology and forsake the old-fashioned ways of keeping in touch: personal visits, phone calls and letter writing. Number two issue: privacy. There’s a lot of concern over who is following whom on the web; it’s like opening the door to your home to a stalker. Another is the spam messages like what happened recently with some high-profile accounts. On the same note, people can send numerous advertising thru tweets to unsuspecting followers to promote their business. Twitter has also been banned by some employers so as not to be a distraction to their employees, because it drives your attention away from work and other important tasks.

Personally, Twitter should be used as a tool to see and hear what other people are up to. Although it gives you a fragmented idea of ideas, opinions, events, feedbacks, and news, this is what makes you treasure those people even more. Especially if that particular person lives on the other side of the world; Twitter creates a feeling of intimacy that we all crave and strive for.

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