how to use Twitter

People are asking me, "What is Twitter?" and related to that, "How do you use Twitter?" Let me try to summarize what I've learned the past 2 days of active Twittering.

I'd describe it this way: Twittering is text-message blogging. Instead of writing blog entries with sentences and paragraphs, you'd write entries of 140 characters or less.

After signing up for Twitter back in 2006, I'd only used it sporadically. Hearing the buzz that Twitter was indeed “this year’s Twitter” at SXSW 2008 (VentureBeat via The Industry Standard; SXSW is a mega-conference for music, interactive technologies, and film in Austin each year), I fired up my Twitter again and used it to live-blog the Awaken conference earlier this week.

Twitter was perfect for a conference! I could send updates of where I was (to meetup with people) and also to take notes from the speakers. And when the data network was down, I could use SMS on my cell phone to text in my tweets.

Twitter is really handy because you can update it so many ways: IM (instant messaging), SMS (text msg from a cell phone), email, web browser, mobile browser, 3rd party software, and even voice (via a phone call to  jott.com). And, you can "follow" someone's twitter feed (aka get notifications), there are so many ways to receive updates: email, IM, SMS text msg, RSS feed, and more.

I won't be giving instructions on how to use Twitter here -- you can get that by reading the Twitter FAQ.

Some other uses: many people constantly twitter with a status of what they're doing, like terrystorch or breyeschow, like a mini color-commentary of their a-day-in-the-life-of. Mark Batterson uses twitter as a link to his blog updates (using handy-dandy twitterfeed ). Many other people occasionally update their twitter, maybe once a week, or unpredictably when they feel like it.

Here's more info I found about Twitter for those of you who are intrigued and want to drill down:

• Caroline Middlebrook: The Big Juicy Twitter Guide
• Sarah Lacy in Business Week: "Twitter is as socially transformative as blogging"
• Technology Evangelist: What is Twitter?
• Bob Rankin: Micro-blogging with Twitter

Here's the question for you: do you twitter?

[video courtesy Common Craft]

Aside: watch this video about SXSW, Twitter, SocialThing and FriendFeed

[related] Westwinds Church tries Twitter Sunday + The Social Web - Waste of Time or Killer Faith App?

--- DJ Chuang, Director of Digital Initiatives + more @ Leadership Network

Comments

[Jonathan Blundell]

CommonCraft has one of the best explanations of Twitter I've seen...

Twitter in Plain English...
http://commoncraft.com/Twitter

[James Higginbotham]

I have been using Twitter for the last month or so to talk about things that don't fit into my blogs. Typically, these are more personal topics, along with recent blog posts using TwitterFeed. I'm at
http://twitter.com/jhigginbotham

I find it interesting to follow bloggers that I'm subscribed to already, as they often update Twitter with small things going on in their life that may not be post-worthy on their blog.

[Tony Whittaker]

At Internet Evangelism Day, we have done a page about Twitter:
InternetEvangelismDay.com/twitter.php

and would welcome feedback and examples of using Twitter in ministry.

Blessings and thanks

Tony