Friday, February 13, 2009

How to Twitter: why the world is Twitter crazy

(Courtesy of Lucy Atkins and the Telegraph)

Simon says: - "I recently came across Twitter when it was reported that the Twitter network was discussing the Hudson River plane landing and viewing photograph's of it literally seconds after it happened and more than an hour before any of the major news networks reported it. I have signed up and get regular updates straight from the mobile of his highness Lance Armstrong - very cool.

I'm only beginning to scratch the surface and yes it's already driving me potty but less so than Facebook - It is the world's fastest growing website and looks like it's not only here to stay but likely to be a major influence on business and personal society for a longtime to come.

An advantage in the UK is that updates are sent to your phone - this is not the case in Malaysia yet but I have no doubt that it will come. Check out this article - sign-up it's dead simple and then make up your own mind - you can find me on twitter as Tritwins"


Twitter is taking the world by storm, leaving Facebook and email in its wake. We examine how the micro-blogging site is helping users in their personal and professional lives.

Are you tweeting yet? If not, you probably will be soon. Thanks to the public enthusiasm of several celebrity twitterers, this new mode of communication has suddenly become a national craze. Just as we once rushed to open email accounts or buy mobile phones, now we are signing up to Twitter at a fearsome rate.

One-to-one communication is officially passé. Instead, it is suddenly essential to tell your friends, family, business contacts and even thousands of complete strangers what you are doing or thinking at every hour of the day or night.

TV host Jonathan Ross and actor Stephen Fry are both keen twitterers. They discussed the joys of tweeting (the correct verb, according to a recent discussion on Twitter) on Ross’s recent comeback show, where Ross also recommended it to Hollywood star Tom Cruise, who might just start. Comedian Russell Brand and chef Jamie Oliver have recently signed up. Barack Obama famously tweeted throughout his campaign. John Cleese is a regular. Even Britney Spears is at it. But what exactly is Twitter? And should we care?

According to web experts, this so-called “micro-blogging service” is the new Facebook. Facebook, in case you missed it, was (until Twitter happened) the new email; a social networking website on which you talk to friends, put up pictures and, increasingly, advance your career. But now the world is tweeting. Recent figures show a 974 per cent increase in Twitter traffic over the past year, shooting the website from the 2,953rd most visited site among UK users to the 291st most visited by mid-January this year. Industry analysts say that more than 2.25 million “tweets” – Twitter messages – are now posted every day worldwide.

The good news for technophobes is that basic tweeting is so simple a child could do it. You log onto Twitter.com, create a “profile” – your picture, plus a few words – then start posting “tweets”. Tweets differ from emails in two ways: they are public – anyone on Twitter can find and read them – and they are always short: a maximum of 140 characters long. Other Twitterers choose to “follow” your tweets and you, in turn, decide to follow theirs. This way, you can find out, for instance, that your friend is on a ski lift and your colleague needs feedback on a product idea. (Tweets can contain links to other websites, documents or pictures.)

See full article by clicking here - it makes interesting reading.

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