May 07 2008
Do You Twitter?
Do you Twitter yet? Do you even know why you should? Do you know what Twitter is?
What is Twitter? According to the Twitter website, ” Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” . Twitter lets you send 140 character messages that are visible to anyone and the messages can be sent via the web, IM, cell phone SMS text messaging and the Twitter API. Twittering is also referred to as micro-blogging - and most Twits are easier to read and scan because of the 140 character limitation.
Twitter is definitely moving into the mainstream as evidenced by these two recent quotes:
- “Twitter is one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet” - New York Times
- ‘Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app” - TIME Magazine
Common Craft put together this short video to explain Twitter:
Why do I care? Sure, people share some mundane things in their life, but the real value of Twitter is gathering a group of people you follow and learning from them. I use Twitter to find great blog posts and other resources that I may have otherwise missed. Many astute companies are now using Twitter from a marketing perspective to listen to what their customers are saying and to promote blog posts, news articles and press releases. For example, CIO.com is active in Twitter as well as the Editor-in-Chief, Abbie Lundberg, and editor/writer Esther Schindler. People have even ‘twittered’ about iRise and there is even a website called Tweetscan where you can search on companies, people and other phrases.
Twitter Resources Here are some other essential Twitter links to check out:
- Twitter Guide by Caroline Middlebrook
- Advanced Twittering by Jim Storer of Mzinga
- Twitter 101 presentation by Dustin Jacobsen
- Twitter Resources in the EKIVE blog
- Twitter Resource Roundup from the ext337 blog
- A Talk with the Twitter Guys - Shel Israel interviews the Twitter founders
- Twitter Pack - see who you should follow sorted by company, topic, geography, industry and profession. For example, there is a list of the key Usability/UX professionals who Twitter.
It does take some upfront investment of time to get started with Twitter and you have to find the right set of people to follow who are not going to waste your time. Here is a copy of my Twitter feed so you can visualize the value for yourself. Scroll down and see who I’m following. You can click on a user name to access a person’s profile on Twitter and start following them.
You can find me on Twitter at @tomhumbarger. I look forward to seeing you in the “twittersphere”.
Of course I’ll be one of the first to comment here, because I (@wwwmarty) follow @thumbarger on twitter and learned of this post very quickly. Pretty cool stuff, and I think we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg — lots of people are doing lots of neat things on the back of twittery networks.
Also, it’s probably worth mentioning that http://www.summize.com is way cooler than tweetscan, when it comes to searching the twittersphere. For now at least.
Hi Tom - Nice summary post. Interestingly, I missed your update about this post on Twitter, but caught it with a Google Alert for Mzinga. Your point about monitoring Twitter for your brand is a good one and Tweetscan (and apparently Summize) are good tools to help do that. Of course, Google Alerts also provide insights into what people are saying in a much broader context (across the web), so it’s a good idea to put both in place. We also have a corporate Twitter account (follow @Mzinga) to keep people up to date on the latest news and events we’re taking part in. It remains to be seen whether this becomes a common practice or not; we’re still testing the waters.
Jim (@jstorerj on Twitter)
Tom - love it. Nice, welll-rounded explanation (particularly the WIFM part). Keep on truckin’!
Best,
Aaron | @astrout
Just edited the post to include a video interview link by Shel Israel with the “Twitter Guys”.
The teaser is “GNTV’s Shel Israel talks with Twitter founders about how the company got started, who uses the popular service and how. They examine business models and how business is starting to use the mobile SMS service.”
Nicely described, finally a good way to tell non-tech types why I am twittering. Bookmarked for future forwarding. Thanks, you saved me a lot of head scratching. (found post linked by @jstorer on twitter)
-great links also.
@isle
I recently started using Twitter and I think they have a good product. Sometimes I just don’t have enough time to sit down and create a long blog post about something, but I still feel like I should post it somewhere. Twitter allows me to do that easily.
Tom - I really like that you did this. It took me a while to get on board with twitter and see the value, but now I’m liking it. The more people contribute and respond to info gathering questions, the better it gets for me.