What Is Twitter?

Somewhere between a blog post and an instant message, a ‘Tweet’ is a short, 140 character posting that lets your friends (also called ‘followers’, which makes you seem much more important than you really are) know what you are doing, thinking, feeling or excreting at any given moment.

Why Should I Care?

On the surface you might ask, “Why would I want to know all of the mundane things my friends are doing?”. Good question, but there is more to it than that:

• For people who use instant messaging a lot, its a great way to send that YouTube video of a ‘fat man riding a unicycle’ to all your friends at once.
• As a blogger, its also a nice way to share something you are working on or an interesting article without feeling obliged to write several paragraphs rehashing the material.
• For text messagers, its handy to post a tweet about a good band playing down the street or that you’ll be out at the pub later to all of your friends instead of spamming them with text messages.

What Can I Tweet?

You can add plain text of course, links to other websites, pictures using services like Twinkle and BrightKite, and you can also direct messages to other users with ’@<user>’ and tag posts with ’#<tag>’.

How Do I Use It?

Using Twitter through the web is just the first step towards really getting the most from it. You can send and receive messages through your mobile phone (and pictures too), or using a host of desktop and iPhone clients such as Twhirl, Twinkle or Twitterific. You can also add the Twitter Facebook Application so your updates are shown on your profile.

The Power of Twitter

Twitter has evolved from status updates into public conversation with colleagues, companies, and your target audience. Here are the highlights of one memorable week in Scoble’s tweetstream.

• People worry about companies starting to use Twitter for marketing. If companies misuse Twitter, block or unfollow them. Problem solved.
  Remember, it’s who you follow that defines you
• Twitter is the public square. Lots of noise, little signal. Blogs are like a speech. Signal, but little noise
• I expect that Google will buy FriendFeed and Twitter within 18 months. Not to mention a video service like Flixwagon or Qik or Kyte
• There’s a lot of money in free services.

Who Should I Follow?

Now that you know the basics, who should you start following? Here are some folks I would recommend: