Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter etc

The Basics

Considering this is a service I have been using since 2007 I must start by saying I’m a little ashamed that I am only writing this now but I feel I must, as of recent a ton of friends and family have been hassling me for answers so here they are for future referrals.

Twitter was originally started by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in early 2006 as a sideline project for a internal short messing service and has grown into the world wide phenomenon we know today.

Twitter is a micro blogging platform that limits your messages to 140 characters or less. Start off by going to www.twitter.com and signing up. After this you will want to add some friends by clicking on the “Find people” tab at the top of your twitter home page, you can search contacts from your Gmail / Hotmail accounts etc or search for people by name. What you get out of Twitter will only be as useful and powerful as the network of people you build around it, so it may take a little while to build your network up but it can be extremely worth it in the end.

The way Twitter works is that you “Follow” people or companies you know or are interested in and then every time they write a message (a “Tweet”) you will get notified on your twitter home page. In turn people can follow you back.

There are two main ways of messaging people (“Tweeting”). The first is a public message (everyone can see it) all you do is type @ followed by the users name your directing your message at (e.g @daveduarte how’s Nomadic Marketing going?). The second is a “direct” message (only the recipient will see the message) to send a direct message the recipient needs to be “following” you and vice versa. To send a direct message you type “d” followed by the username your twittering (e.g. d @allankent lets play wii at the office later). You can also forward (“Retweet”) messages you have seen by typing “RT” before you copy the message.

Twitter Clients

That’s the basics, now as you can imagine if your following 100+ users you don’t really want to have to look at your Twitter home page in your browser all the time so best thing to do is download a free Twitter client, these work like a news ticker, updateing all the tweets you reciveve and putting them in one easy to read stream. The Two main ones are Twhirl and TweetDeck and both work with PC and MAC and simply allow you to receive tweets without interrupting your workflow too much. Both also intergrate 3rd party apps such as some of the ones listed below.  My recommendation would be Twhirl as its more compact and has similar capabilities (see pic above) but both work very well.

You can also Tweet from your phone (see the settings tab on your home page)

Other clients out there include: Digsby, Spaz, PocketTweets, Google Desktop and Twitterrific.

Useful Twitter apps 

Twitpic: This allows you to tweet a picture from your phone or computer etc and is built in to Twhirl and Tweetdeck.

Twitscoop / Twitter Search: Lets you see in real time what key words/topics people are tweeting about all over the world.

Twitterfone: lets you send messages to Twitter using voice.

Twinfluence: Lets you see how much influence your Twitter profile has.

Twitsaver: Gives you a free screensaver based on Twitpic (shows real-time pictures that are being uploaded to Twitter)

One last thing that Twitter can be great for is as a real time search tool i.e. rather than looking for information/jobs etc via Google you can find out directly from people in and around your twitter network.

At present there is no revenue model for Twitter and it has received some problems with downtime from traffic overloads but as its the hottest talk of the town expect changes to happen by the end of the year I would say (for better or worse).

You can follow me on Twitter here and if you have any questions just let me know.