I have written about Twitter a couple of times over on WebbyOnline.com, with the gist of it being this: “What’s the point?” But, WebbyOnline is for people already familiar with what’s going on online. For many of you, you may not even know what Twitter is. If that is you, read on.
Introduction to Social Media
Much of what is going on these days in the world of technology and the internet has moved to what is called “social media”. Social media is a component of what some refer to as Web 2.0. “Web 2.0″ is a vague term and even a lot of techies have differing views on what it means. My take is that Web 2.0 refers to the next evolution of the internet, including things like web-based software, user-generated content and, yes, social media.
Social media, as you can probably infer from the name, is media which is, by nature, social. It is defined by the people who use it. Traditional media is usually arranged in a top-down setup, where a content provider decides what the content is and distributes it to viewers. The viewers have no direct say (other than ratings, perhaps) in what the content is. This is your classic TV network, radio station, even the traditional website. Social media beings to encompass the reverse of the above. Empowering the users to create content.
PC Mechanic itself, and it’s evolution, is evidence of social media. This site was recently converted to a blog format. Blogs, by nature, invite more user participation through the use of comments. But, go out onto the internet and you see all kinds of new social media platforms such as Myspace, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.
What is Twitter?
Well, first, let’s look at the blog. A blog is basically a website which a person can type up and post their thoughts in chronological order. It is short for “web log”, and the medium started out mainly as a kind of online journal. It evolved to the point where a lot of blogs today are actually very high quality and don’t at all resemble an online journal. Many blogs today offer very relevant and well-thought content. So, take that same concept, shrink it down to a VERY small level, and you have the idea behind Twitter.
Twitter is a kind of mini-blog platform. “Mini” in that each post can only comprise of 140 characters. A post to Twitter is commonly referred to as a “tweet”. It is cross-platform, meaning you can post “tweets” using the website, your cell phone (via text message) and even instant messenger. Twitter asks the simple question “What are you doing?”. So, it invites users to type in short little statements about what they are doing right then.
Using Twitter
To use Twitter, you would simply head over to the site and create a profile. As soon as the profile is created, you can immediately post tweets using their website. If you want to be able to do so via your cell phone or IM, you need to set that up. Cell phone setup involves giving them your cell number. Twitter will then send you a short text message with a confirmation code. Type that code into the website and you will complete the hookup. The same procedure goes for instant message.
When you post a tweet, it appears live in your profile very shortly. Your tweet will also appear in the public timeline on Twitter and on the Twitter homepage. But, don’t expect it to remain on the homepage for any more than a few seconds. The volume of tweets coming in from around the world means your contribution will cycle off the page VERY quickly.
Uses for Twitter
Well, this has been a subject of considerable debate. Interestingly, though, even a lot of the people who question Twitter’s use end up using it. You can read a couple of my columns on WebbyOnline.com on this subject:
Most people end up using Twitter for pointless reasons. Just because it’s fun. Others (primarily content providers) have tried Twitter as an additional outlet for covering their updates. For example, ZDNet is using a Twitter profile to post whenever something new is posted to one of the ZDNet blogs. This works because you can follow somebody else’s profile on Twitter…
Following a Profile
When viewing another’s profile, you see a little “Follow” button under their name. Hit this button and you subscribe to all of that person’s updates. This means that whenever they post a tweet, you will get a notification of that update. You can follow their updates on the web, but you can also get updates via your cell phone and instant messenger. So, if you follow the PCMech Twitter profile, and you have your IM and cell profiles set up, then whenever I post to that profile, you will get a notification via your cell phone and/or instant message. Depending on the profile you are following, this could lead to a constant barrage of text messages and IMs. Yes, that could be annoying. The good thing is that you can put it to sleep in your own Twitter profile. You can either disable such notifications altogether or you can put it to sleep for certain times of the day (when in bed, for example).
A note on using your cell phone: You probably want to have a cell plan that has unlimited text messaging. Twitter doesn’t charge you anything, however your cell phone company might.
And That’s Twitter
That’s essentially Twitter in a nutshell. Like many new social platforms, they have also opened it up to other websites. This has given birth to some interesting sites like Twittervision, TwitterSearch, and many others. There are even desktop clients to Twitter now, including TwitBox, TwitterRoo, and Twitterlicious.
What makes Twitter interesting to me is the fact that they have bridged the gap between computers, cell phones and IM. It’s not like that bridge hasn’t been crossed before, however bringing all these mediums seamlessly in a social media application like this is innovative. That said, the verdict is still out on how this site will evolve and whether it will prove useful. At this point, I tend to look at it skeptically. Not because I think it will fail, but more because I see it turning into the next Myspace – a cool platform that gets polluted by crappy users.
We shall see.
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