If you ask your Baby Boomer neighbor to twitter you next time she finds a sale on lobster at Albertsons, you will probably get a quizical stare. Not many in this generation are familiar with Twitter, but many want to know what is going on so here is a short guide to using twitter.
What is Twitter?
According to Om Malik,
“Twitter is a micro-messaging service that has caught the imaginations of everyone from tech mommies to cable news networks, sports stars and Hollywood stars. It has become the source of breaking news and rumors.”
A twitter is an instant text message from a cell phone or computer. A twitter is a sentence that is less than 140 characters long. It’s a short, but sweet message, like a chirp from a bird. The purpose of a twitter is to tell someone what your latest thoughts or activities have been. Twitter messages can be read from a mobile phone or the internet. You need to set up an account at Twitter.com to use this service.
Who gets your twitter messages?
Someone that you have asked to follow your messages or that has asked you if they can follow you. You can have no followers or you can have thousands of followers. It’s all up to you.
Websites such as twitterholic.com will tell you what people or organizations have the most number of followers. CNN Breaking News has the most number of followers (437,573) which makes sense. People can get breaking news on their cell phones when the stories are released. President Barack Obama has the most number of friends (374,715) however, he has not made any posts since he became President.
What is a tweep?
Tweeps are people who receive your twitter messages. You too can become a tweep.
Who invented Twittering?
Twittering, commonly referred to as micro-blogging or micro-messaging was the brain child of Jack Dorsey. He started a company that was using software for emergency dispatch couriers, taxis, and emergency services from the web. He and Isaac Stone, they wrote Twitter’s prototype, using instant text messaging, in about two weeks. They took their ideas to a company called Odeo and teamed up with Evan Williams, well known for his role in Blogger, one of the first web applications for creating and managing blogs. They launched Twitter Inc., and three years later Twitter has approximately 5 million users. In February of 2009, they received a buyout offer of $500M.
Who cares about your tweets?
This depends on you. If you are a witness to an earthquake, a fire or other natural disaster, you may be the key to notifying people about the emergency situation. You may save lives by your quick thinking and quick messaging. You might come across an article that you love and want to tell people about. If you can type your message in 140 characters or less, you can tell all of your followers about it. If you find that the url you want to announce is too long, go to tinyurl.com and make it shorter. Have you read a good book lately? Gone to a good movie? Gone to a horrible movie? Let others know about it. Tweet it! See the bird below this post? Baby boomer tweeps are invited to click on this link and share this post. You can follow my tweets by going to twitter.com
Come on over to twitter. But beware. You’ll be addicted before long. Even if you are a baby boomer. 🙂
Wow. That is the longest comment I’ve had. Thank you for taking time to respond. I might explain to you that the concept of Twitter evolved from someone seeing how helpful it was to be able to notify emergency medical help quickly and with a short message. That original idea was how Twitter was born. What people do with Twitter from that point becomes something entirely up to the individual. It’s impossible to read thousands of twitter messages from thousands of people. That’s just life. But it is really fun to just relax for a few minutes and see what others are talking about. Practically speaking, you can read good quotes, get sent to popular articles or just turn everything off. The benefit of Twitter is totally up to the individual. You don’t have to read any of it and none of it needs to go to your cell phone. You can turn all of that off.
There really are only a few fundamentals to learn about Twitter. Keep your message under 140 characters and say something meaningful. If you want to find people talking about the latest movie…do a search at http://search.twitter.com/. After a while, you’ll catch on to all the ways you can use Twitter.
Thanks for your comments. I hope you come back to visit again.
Sherry