Tweet tweet! Getting to know Twitter
What’s everyone Twittering on about? This has been the vague question floating about my brain for the last few months, so intrigued and always unfashionably late to any technology party, I decided to dive in and see what the latest (to me, I’m slow on the uptake) social networking site/tool/thingummyjig was all about.
Initially I had thought that it looked like it might be a fun little time waster, but one which I didn’t need at the moment. I have plenty of those thanks very much. However, then I started to hear rumbles in the internet jungle that it was a great work networking tool and that got me thinking…
For those who don’t know (let’s all point and laugh), Twitter is described by many as a “micro blogging site”, or even “moblogging” if you want to get really technical, which I don’t and can’t so let’s leave that one there. Basically, you post “tweets” which are like mini blog posts or Facebook updates, except they can only be 140 characters or less long. The tweet prompt is "what are you doing?". You “follow” people and receive their tweets and people also follow you and receive your tweets. You can then respond to other people’s tweets and strike up a conversation. If you want more detail than that, then you’ll have to sign up!
So, after fumbling about for too long (my fault, not Twitter’s) getting signed up and trying, and failing, to upload my photo, I was ready for some tweeting action. Woohoo! Except…I had no followers…and I didn’t know how to find people to follow. Suddenly I felt like I was standing on my own at a party…except without any gin to make me look busy.
I have heard a lot of “Twitter's not exactly rocket science” quips on my research rounds online so yes, I did feel a bit thick. In a bid to avoid an internet flaming if I requested help online, I drafted in a trusted friend to show me the Twitter ropes. She is already on there for fun and she knows me well enough to appreciate exactly how basic my little tutorial would need to be.
You can search for people by name – I had got that far myself! – but she also showed me a nifty tool where you can type in the keywords which you’re interested in and you’ll find people that have tweeted about that.
Starting small, I am now following 19 other people. At first, if you’re a delicate flower like me, Twitter can be a bit overwhelming with everyone “talking” at once and it being hard to see who’s talking to who about what. However, my internet ear has started to attune and amongst the plethora of “spam sandwiches for tea” tweets, I have actually found out some very interesting things, for example I’ve been alerted to really interesting articles online, along with forum discussions in my areas of interest.
I must admit I’m still a bit shy of tweeting myself. Some Twitterers are posting and linking to genuinely interesting items, while others are happy to just detail the minutiae of their everyday life, and I have no issue with that either - the site is there to use as you will and your followers will rise and fall depending on who finds it interesting. Still, I am a bit wary of making a tweet faux pas the first time I open my beak. For now, I’m happy to just acclimatise to Twitter a little bit longer (I told you I was a delicate flower).
I haven’t done anything especially useful for work as yet; however, I can definitely see the potential benefits the site could have for me. Just as an example, if I were looking for a case study or comment for an article, imagine how wide I could cast my net in less than a minute. Apart from that I am learning a lot of really relevant stuff from other people’s tweets already.
I do think I’ll have to invest a fair amount of time though. The key will be finding quality people to “follow”, rather than following as many people as possible. When I am feeling a bit more talkative I will also need to work on building following too, which sounds a bit scary. They tell me that you do this through posting interesting links and commenting a lot on others’ tweets.
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So, in theory I can really see the potential work benefits of Twitter. It remains to be seen whether I it is a tool that will work for me, but I am definitely not deleting my account just yet.
Are you on Twitter? Do you use it for work? Reveal yourself if you want potential new FreelanceUK followers!
Mar 25, 2009
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