Let Me Tell You About the Birds and the Tweets
With the explosive growth and usage of Twitter these days, many people are left in the dark as to what the heck it is and why so many people are finding a use for it.
While I've tried to explain Twitter in plain English using the gift I have known as "speech", I'm finding the explanation very hard to get across, thus giving me more of a "speech impediment".
On a lighter note, isn't the marketing for Twitter "so freakin' cute"?!! Twitter could be (and has been) compared to and described as a form of texting, or emailing, or blogging.
While none of those are completely wrong, they aren't totally hitting the nail on the head either.
Twitter is what's known as a "microblogging service", thus making the "blogging" option above the closest correct answer, I guess (doh!).
Microblogging is basically taking this website, Jabloggy, and summarizing all of my articles into 140 characters or less.
140 is the magic number because when Twitter was conceived, it was designed to work with sending text messages on your mobile device, and 140 is the standard length of a text message.
In fact, Twitter is now considered the "SMS of the Internet" (SMS = Short Message Service = Text Messages = Texting; more on that later).
The short length of these "tweets" (when someone puts something up on Twitter, it's called a "tweet") is mainly why Twitter is extremely popular with marketing and public relations.
Since making websites and promoting them is part of my job, I know that the more straight to the point you are, the quicker you can get an idea across to someone (without a lot of sugarcoating), the better your marketing approach is.
Marketing people (including bloggers, music promoters, CEOs, etc.
) use Twitter for many things: 1.
) to publish press release titles with a link to the full release on their website; 2.
) to link to articles and news bits they find online they feel may be useful to others (exchanging knowledge); 3.
) to promote their latest blog post (like I do for Jabloggy); 4.
) to announce the release of a band's latest album or upcoming concert; 5.
) or whatever needs to be promoted or exchanged.
While marketing is a big use for Twitter, it's not the only one.
A lot of popular sites these days, including Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, have available tools that allow Twitter to connect to their sites.
This in turn gives us features like allowing Twitter users to post their "tweets" to their Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn profiles.
I won't get into Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn yet, so hopefully I'll remember to get back into this topic later.
A third use for Twitter, and perhaps one of the biggest, is real time news updates.
In fact, I myself have learned about several breaking news stories via Twitter before any place else even mentioned it.
Twitter is actually a more reliable source of news and information than say, CNN.
com, ESPN.
com, or Yahoo.
com.
That's because everyone and their brother uses Twitter, and those that experience breaking news, either first hand or as a local onlooker, can whip out their mobile device and post a "tweet" with what just happened.
Plus services that connect with Twitter, such as TwitPic, allow you to post photos directly from your mobile device.
In this respect, Twitter is probably (close to) the largest news network on the planet.
Everyday people experience news and events before the Associated Press or any of the nosey media gets involved, so chances are its old news already by the time they get there.
Isn't the Internet great?! Now that I've covered the uses for Twitter, you may ask "how does one receive tweets from another person?".
Well, while the way you use Twitter may be considered "microblogging", the way you interact with people can be more described as a "social network", like Facebook.
As a Twitter user, you subscribe to, or "follow" other users.
In return, they follow your tweets, thus creating a network of everyone following each other.
As your network of followers grows, the more reach you have to market your tweets.
While I could probably go on and on about Twitter, its many uses, and really try and cover it all, it could probably get even more confusing.
If there is still a lot of confusion, I may have to write a sequel to this twitterific saga!
While I've tried to explain Twitter in plain English using the gift I have known as "speech", I'm finding the explanation very hard to get across, thus giving me more of a "speech impediment".
On a lighter note, isn't the marketing for Twitter "so freakin' cute"?!! Twitter could be (and has been) compared to and described as a form of texting, or emailing, or blogging.
While none of those are completely wrong, they aren't totally hitting the nail on the head either.
Twitter is what's known as a "microblogging service", thus making the "blogging" option above the closest correct answer, I guess (doh!).
Microblogging is basically taking this website, Jabloggy, and summarizing all of my articles into 140 characters or less.
140 is the magic number because when Twitter was conceived, it was designed to work with sending text messages on your mobile device, and 140 is the standard length of a text message.
In fact, Twitter is now considered the "SMS of the Internet" (SMS = Short Message Service = Text Messages = Texting; more on that later).
The short length of these "tweets" (when someone puts something up on Twitter, it's called a "tweet") is mainly why Twitter is extremely popular with marketing and public relations.
Since making websites and promoting them is part of my job, I know that the more straight to the point you are, the quicker you can get an idea across to someone (without a lot of sugarcoating), the better your marketing approach is.
Marketing people (including bloggers, music promoters, CEOs, etc.
) use Twitter for many things: 1.
) to publish press release titles with a link to the full release on their website; 2.
) to link to articles and news bits they find online they feel may be useful to others (exchanging knowledge); 3.
) to promote their latest blog post (like I do for Jabloggy); 4.
) to announce the release of a band's latest album or upcoming concert; 5.
) or whatever needs to be promoted or exchanged.
While marketing is a big use for Twitter, it's not the only one.
A lot of popular sites these days, including Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, have available tools that allow Twitter to connect to their sites.
This in turn gives us features like allowing Twitter users to post their "tweets" to their Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn profiles.
I won't get into Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn yet, so hopefully I'll remember to get back into this topic later.
A third use for Twitter, and perhaps one of the biggest, is real time news updates.
In fact, I myself have learned about several breaking news stories via Twitter before any place else even mentioned it.
Twitter is actually a more reliable source of news and information than say, CNN.
com, ESPN.
com, or Yahoo.
com.
That's because everyone and their brother uses Twitter, and those that experience breaking news, either first hand or as a local onlooker, can whip out their mobile device and post a "tweet" with what just happened.
Plus services that connect with Twitter, such as TwitPic, allow you to post photos directly from your mobile device.
In this respect, Twitter is probably (close to) the largest news network on the planet.
Everyday people experience news and events before the Associated Press or any of the nosey media gets involved, so chances are its old news already by the time they get there.
Isn't the Internet great?! Now that I've covered the uses for Twitter, you may ask "how does one receive tweets from another person?".
Well, while the way you use Twitter may be considered "microblogging", the way you interact with people can be more described as a "social network", like Facebook.
As a Twitter user, you subscribe to, or "follow" other users.
In return, they follow your tweets, thus creating a network of everyone following each other.
As your network of followers grows, the more reach you have to market your tweets.
While I could probably go on and on about Twitter, its many uses, and really try and cover it all, it could probably get even more confusing.
If there is still a lot of confusion, I may have to write a sequel to this twitterific saga!
