Friday, August 28, 2009

“Everything you need to know about Twittering”

It is fair to say that Twitter has had an gigantic effect on how social networking communities are designed. After just 3 years of existence twitter has already climbed to the 3rd most used social  twitter_bird_2 media website with Facebook being the largest followed by Myspace in second place. For June 2009, Alexa traffic statistics indicate Twitter is ranked 33 overall for the most visited sites and is estimated to have 9 million registered users from the world over. So,  have you taken the plunge yet and started twittering?

Twitter is often coined as a micro-blogging web site which allows anyone to stay in communication with others 24/7. You can register by surfing to 'twitter.com' site and writing your personal details in the spaces provided. It is advisable to provide your real info so you are able to connect with real people. In your account profile settings you can unselect ‘protect my updates’ to let everyone read your tweet updates or leave it ticked in order to restrict your  messages only to those close allies or followers.

Sending your Twitter account url link to all your friends and relatives can let them now know that you have an account on Twitter.

Even when you aren't actually on the net, Twitter can still be used. When you're a registered member on Twitter, you can also enter your personal profile by  using Instant Messenger application or cellular phone. To set up this feature with your profile, first you have the right settings checked to link your mobile and instant message accounts to Twitter.

Once this is done, tweeting messages can be sent by any of the registered devices. To transfer tweets via your mobile phone, a text sms is sent to the number 40404. The unique caller ID from your mobile device is than stored on your profile so those tweets will be identified in the future. If you’re in AIM, you can send the IM to TwitterIM but if you’re in Yahoo or MSN they can be sent via instant message to Twitter so it makes no difference where you are, friends and followers will have access to your tweets and can even receive tweet updates on their mobile device.

But you may still ask how do I read my friends messages that they send? Well, to do this you need to log into Twitter and add your friends user names to your own list. In your account there is an ‘Actions’ tab box, use your mouse to click on the word 'Add’. Another good feature is the search box that will let you find user profiles of more friends and maybe even close relatives or school friends you have lost contact with. It is important to note twitter users that have account profiles selected as private will have to accept a follower request from you before it is possible to start reading their tweets.

Managing your list of contacts is difficult via cell phone so it is much simpler to do it online. You can also choose to restrict phone use to only receive the tweets so even if you are away from your computer, updates will still be sent.

Twittering can really bring a lot of enjoyment. It is worth the time it takes to register there and configure your profile to suit your life.  Go meet up with all your mates and find out what they are doing. Just remember to post tweets regularly too so everyone will be kept up to date. There are also many useful tools that help save the amount of time that it takes to do some of the more mundane processes and allow twitter to be a more enjoyable experience.

1 comment:

  1. I've worked Twitter hard for the past six months.

    I've found that if I look to Twitter as a place to meet cool people and make great contacts I get more out of it. Rather than thinking of it as a place to market my services.

    Twitter Search is awesome. I'm there all the time. I don't monitor posts but I do check @ posts.

    ReplyDelete

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