I started tweeting not but a day or two ago, and since Ed McMahon has been gracing the front of my blog for weeks now, i figured i may as well write this bite-sized first impression.
Ok, the basics:
What is Twitter?
Twitter is sort of like a social networking site on cocaine. Websites like Facebook and Myspace allow many people to communicate, but Twitter narrows down all communications to a 140 character limit. The point? Add people you like to your twitter, and get moment-by-moment tweets they send out about their lives and whats happening right now.
Subsequently, you can also tweet all you like. I tweet rather excessively, a common symptom of early tweeters I imagine.
You can tweet from your computer, or you can use a mobile device to send your tweets via text-message or application.
So, does it work?
In a word.. Yes. Signup is simple, and finding ways to embed your tweets is easy using their pre-designed flash and HTML tweet widgets. Some websites include twitter widgets, like WordPress and Facebook. A twitter account might be the one thing missing from your blog, since not everything you notice or have to say is worth a multi-paragraph article. Sometimes just a tweet is enough.
I am a little annoyed with some of Twitter.com’s flaws, however. None are crippling, but they do seem trivial for such a popular website. Things like spam-followers who follow your account just so you will check their page and have a typical spam ad thrown at you in the form of a tweet. Now, none of the Spam followers have an impact on your main page or updates, but they do appear in your follower list and gunk it up. Also, the Following (who i’m following) list still has Weird Al Yankovic as my only subscription. Which, of course, is not true. Twitter claims they will be fixing this issue with page updates, i guess we’ll have to see.
Long story short:
Twitter is a great way to kill time, read interesting material from friends and figures you enjoy (i got some great advice from Trent Reznor the other day) and its simple. I highly recommend the experience.
I’ve reached 100 tweets, i’ll get back to you when i hit a higher value. We’ll see then what i think of twitter.
If you’d like to follow me on twitter, just click here -> Joe Schell on Twitter
The Fifth Blog 