What is Twitter and Why Is Everyone Talking About it?
Posted by Eddie Yu on Tue, Feb 24, 2009
Even as Twitter grows in popularity, there is still a wide gap of understanding as to what it is. For many people, Twitter is still just another one of those weird sounding tools out there that everyone else seems to understand, but they have no clue what really happens there and why they should take the time to learn more.
Twitter may seem complicated at first glance, but once you jump in and go for it, your first reaction will be something along the lines of "that's it?" Yes, that's it. Twitter is just a simple way to communiate with others using a slight variation of other more common methods like blogs or chat rooms. In fact, that's what Twitter is: a combination between a blog and a chatroom. The only major difference is, rather than being able to babble on and on in each post, Twitter forces you to condense each post into 140 characters or less.
Using Twitter
Once you get the hang of it, you'll be able to use Twitter without a problem. All you really need to do is create an account (simple), and start posting messages. You can tell people what you're doing. You can post interesting content you've come across. You can share random thoughts about just about anything.
In order to send a message to an individual user, you must include the @ sign, followed by their username. So in order to send me a message, you'd have to include @stevelazuka in your Tweet and that message will be posted on my board. Twitter displays all messages publicly and even lets Google crawl and index them, including the private messages you send to individuals.
What's the Point of Twitter?
Well, i guess the best way to answer this question is to ask another question: what's the point of blogging? What's the point of chatting with others in chat rooms?... and for that matter, what's the point of calling a friend and just talking on the phone about what you're up to and what your thoughts are about a given topic?
The purpose for the average person is to SOCIALIZE.
Of course, while Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks started out as a place for people to socialize, it quickly became evident to businesses that there may be another purpose as well... to market their products and services to a very specific audience. We'll learn more about using Twitter for business in upcoming posts.