What is Twitter, you savvy computer people?

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There are several Twitter apps for the iPhone, and on other Web-enabled phones as well. As long as you have a device connected to the Web, and a Twitter client (piece of software) installed, you can send and receive as many "tweets" as you want, each within the 140 character limit.

Twitter, both the service and the company, are very vulnerable. Fake tweets, Twitter bombs, and the major hack on the Twitter corporate headquarters are all recent examples. It's fun in its own little way, but I wouldn't use it for anything important.

It's essay writing for the SMS crowd.

I've never found a satisfactory use for it and I mainly use it to update my facebook status (which also shows on my blogs etc..).

I've also used TwitterFeed to connect all my blogs to twitter. Now whenever I post on them, my status gets updated to indicate a new post.

and I can use Twitterberry on the blackberry to update my status everywhere...

I've tried conversation via twitter but it just annoys me.

The following stuff is rubbish too because most of the time it's only advertising people who try to follow you.

I don't really have any criticisms towards Twitter, but also don't really understand its appeal. Twitter is, by all means, not innovative. It is extremely simplistic/minimalistic which makes it somewhat appealing.

I think its mostly a social networking "I'm still alive"?

You can't really have a discussion on twitter unless it's only 1 inch deep. It's mostly about posting news, gossip and sometimes a question which might lead to a discussion but which will then better move off twitter.

Thanks a million everyone. You guys rock!

BTW, can you think of ANYTHING that you'd like to comment on that'd be suitable for everyone you know? I can't.

Tell dirty limericks.

Write tweets in less than 141 words:

"Hey everyone, I got an AS diagnosis, yay for me!"

"You won't believe this, I actually-actually just got laid! It'd been like...uhm..erm...forever!"

"Everyone hear this: I'm inlove with my boss! (Boss, don't read this tweet)"

A favourite poem of mine. A bargain at only 46 words. By A.E.Housman

One way that some people take their tweets beyond the whole "Ate a tuna sandwich today" type of tweet is to add the web address of an interesting page to your tweet to add value and interest for one's friends/readers.

For the purpose of analysis, below is a sample tweet broken into parts and explained:

1. The first part of this tweet shares the title of the page the tweet is sharing (Mashable's Top Sites for Those Who Love to Cook)

2. The second part of this tweet shares a clickable link to the page itself ( http://bit.ly/KVZow ). This allows your readers to go directly to the page you've mentioned.

Additionally, notice how short the web address in the link is ( http://bit.ly/KVZow ), yet when you click on that link it will actually take you to a page that has a web address that's far too long to feasibily share within Twitter's 140 character limit ( http://mashable.com/2009/08/05/social-m ... die-sites/ ). The bit.ly address is an example of an URL shortener (a web address shortener) so that longer web addresses can be shared without eating up the 140 character limit.

To use an URL shortener like bit,ly, tinyurl.com, su.pr etc. just go to a reputable url shortener site and paste in the link you want to share. The site will give you a much shorter version of the link that you can use on Twitter and elesewhere.

3. The third part of this tweet (via @foodbuzz ) tells your readers the Twitter username of the person who shared the web address you are linking to if you feel like giving them credit. (Always a polite, but optional thing to do.)

Additionally, if you type @inserttwitterusername (ie. @foodbuzz) anywhere in your tweet, the person you're mentioning will be able to easily see that you've mentioned him.

Another way to give credit to someone who's shared a link with you is to copy and paste the tweet of theirs you want to share with your friends into the Twitter text box at the top of the screen but add their RT @username to the front of the tweet:



RT stands for ReTweet, which means that you are quoting a tweet from someone else because you found the information interesting.

4. The fourth part of this tweet (#food) is called a hashtag which refers to a particular Twitter channel (in this case, one about food) as mentioned above.

Many people with blogs share links to their new blog posts this way as it can be a good way to find new readers.

WOW, thanks!! I see now that Twitter requires some learning to know how to use it effectively. If it weren't for the fact that you have no control who reads your tweets and it's hard to find content that is suitable for everyone you know in the world, I'd give it a try.

You can control who CAN'T read your tweets. ie: block people.

It's just a way of saying "hey, I'm doing this", "hey, I'm here" or "hey, I found this interesting link".

If you do it often enough, you'll find like-minded friends... but of course, there are other, better ways to social networking online.

I've noticed that on some tweets-why are people on twitter using bit.ly instead of tinyurl? Is tinyurl or the other url shorteners blocked? lol I remember before tinyurl had the preview option added. I got nimped a bunch of times in 2005 and even later on.

Twitter uses it, I still haven't found out what is the exact trigger, but sometimes when you post a long url it becomes automagically shortened.

Actually you can use just about any url shortener on Twitter and they will all work.

As an example, the ones I use are:

bit.ly
su.pr
tinyurl.com

As far as getting nimped goes (for those who don't know, if a link shared on Twitter or anywhere else is a hostile one that causes a bunch of annoying popups to swirl around your screen you have been nimped), I found the freeware program Avast Antivirus to be very good for preventing such nuisances. I also use another program called Spybot and Ad-Aware. Both are free.

Recently, Twitter has started banning links to sites like that, so hopefully such problems will lessen.

Last edited by LinnaeusCat on 13 Aug 2009, 11:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

OH, that's interesting. I always forget to tweet when I have a new blog post. Btw, I don't like Twitter as much as I thought I would. 140 chars is just usually not enough to express what I want to.