How to Use Twitter…and Why You Should
December 8, 2009 | VReitano
What is Twitter and what is tweeting? Many people already know how to tweet, but some don’t. Many of my friends are unsure of the purpose of tweets and don’t realize how important certain follows are to your career. If you are going to be involved with the internet in any way, which is pretty much any profession these days, then this is the post for you to read. It will be followed up with ”Top 10 Tweeps”within the next few days.
Twitter is a “privately funded startup with offices in the SoMA neighborhood of San Francisco, CA. Started as a side project in March of 2006, Twitter has grown into a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices.” When asked why people seem to like twittering, the company replied “twitter asks one question, “What’s happening?” Answers must be under 140 characters in length and can be sent via mobile texting, instant message, or the web.” Their Web site is chock full of questions and answers that deal with almost every issue of Twitter.
The simpler explanation is that it is a 140 character short message service used to share news, feelings, professional work, or even Web sites and articles that you find interesting with the entire world. As long as your tweets are public, they can be seen by anyone at any time.
In addition you can view the tweets (which is what these short messages are called) of any member you follow. Some interesting companies/people to follow include, the New York Times, Time Magazine, Good Morning America and Barack Obama. All of these update with breaking news constantly and also include links to articles you may have missed on their site had you gone directly to the parent site.
Twitter’s newsfeed is so much easier to read than Facebook’s and often allows students to pick out the most important news and read it in a moment. Lists, a new feature, also allow you to collect the type of data you like in one place – so that you can get up to date even faster.
Twitter is an amazing tool and it’s free, so you should try it out this year; even if you ultimately end up deleting it, it might be cool to see how many people actually follow you.
