Get Involved With Twitter
Twitter is a very successful social networking site built upon a microblogging platform. The idea is that you can write a microblog consisting of no more than 140 characters. This might be a little description of what you are working on, or a link to your latest blog post, or even just you complaining about it being Monday.
The social networking aspect allows you to follow other peoples microblogs and see what they are up to. You can also reply to their entries and create little conversations.
Why is it popular?
Twitter owes a large part of its success to the fact that it is very easy to post an entry. This is because they have an extensive API that can be used to read and post entries to the site without actually going there. This can be an addon to iGoogle like BeTwittered or a desktop application like TweetDeck. There is also a neat little Wordpress plugin called Twitter Tools that will allow you to post to Twitter when you post an article on your site, or even from the front page of your blog. If you have an iPhone (or iPod touch) then you can download a little application that allows you to send and receive posts on the go. You can also use a plugin on Firefox called Twitbin. The list goes on and on!
The ease by which people can read and post to the site means that they are more likely to do so, especially when bored waiting for the train.
News Service?
The ease of access means that people can easily keep up to date with what is going on with other people, but more importantly, many news services have created profiles that you can follow to keep up to date with current affairs in any subject you are interested in. For example, if you wanted to see the latest news with regards to the web browser Firefox you can subscribe to their Twitter feed at twitter.com/mozillafirefox. This isn’t just restricted to technology sites either, you can find quite a few Twitter profiles from the BBC on sport, technology, current world news, financial news and more.
There are also an increasing number of news stories about news apearing on Twitter before it is heard anywhere else. In February this year the news of an earthquake was announced on Twitter at least half an hour before the news appeared on the BBC website.
Where To Start?
The first step is to get yourself a profile and write a few posts. The good thing about Twitter is that once you have an account you can get it to look at your gmail, Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo contacts and match them with people already using Twitter. After that, you can use the search feature to find users through their names, where they are and what they are talking about. Although at the time of writing this article the search feature isn’t working, which is highly annoying!
It’s tempting when you are new to Twitter to follow everyone and anyone but this can be perceved as a bad thing. When another user views your stats they can see how many users you are following, and now many users are following you. I find any user who is following over 17,000 users when they have only 2 posts a little odd. That bings me onto…
Twitter Etiquette
As with many things online there are a few unspoken rules that need to be followed if you are to use this service. Here is a non-comprehensive list of things to watch out for.
- Try not to add too many followers. I have no idea how active users keep up to date with thousands of followers. I personally have around 130 and this already makes my Twitter home page very busy.
- Don’t post too often. This is just annoying as it will fill up other users Twitter pages with your messages. Because you can only write 140 characters at once you should be consise. If you think you might need more than a couple of posts then write it on another site (like your own blog) and link to it.
- This is also the case with some blog tools that post to Twitter every time you edit a post. Adding a Twitter post when you add a real post is fine. You should not announce every time you have edited a post, which might be multiple times. This is dull and irritating.
- Don’t post too little. This is just plain dull, why would someone want to follow you if you don’t say anything?
- Regarding content. Think about what you are going to say in your Twitter posts. Don’t splash your posts with mindless rubbish.
- Don’t try to sell things. This is important. Twitter is not a mechanism for selling things and your followers will be quickly annoyed by it. Try it if you want, but you will quickly find yourself getting unfollowed and then banned.
- It’s ok to post the odd link to something, especially if it concerns you personally or you find it interesting. Just don’t go overboard and post four hundred links a day!
- If someone follows you that is their choice. You are under no obligation to follow someone just because they follow you. You should follow someone on their own merit.
- If someone does follow you, then a simple “thank you” to the user is a nice thing to do, especially if you find that user interesting.
- If you want to unfollow someone that’s fine, don’t make a big fanfare about it. Just do it quietly and without fuss.
Finally
Once you have a Twitter account you can link it with other sites like Facebook so when you post to Twitter it also posts to your Facebook status. Twitter is a great site to meet new people, exchange ideas, or even just have a laugh. Give it a go and see how it goes!
Philip Norton
Lead Developer, Research and Development
