Week 1 January 22nd – 28th
Last week in class Twitter and Microblogging were mentioned as an emerging technology. I am familiar with social networking (facebook, myspace, etc.), but I had never heard of Twitter before. It sounded like an interesting concept, text messaging meets Myspace “Status” (minus the emoticon for your mood though). I logged on (www.twitter.com), created an account (can be found at http://twitter.com/Zimmies) and tried to figure out the use behind positing 140 character “Tweets” on “What Am I Doing?” At first it looked like fun way to pass time, but I wasn’t sure about how useful it would be. While it was nice to reconnect with some people from high school I hadn’t seen in years, I didn’t really care that they were “Shopping at Costco” or “Getting ready for a night on the town.”
Still, Twitter seems to be very popular, so I was bound and determined to find a practical use for it. I did what I always do when I need information – I did a Google search on “Twitter uses.” Not surprisingly, I found a lot of matches.
After reading through article after article, I found some good information and I’ll admit that I can understand the purpose behind Twitter. While some people do use it to update others on their status, there are many others (including news providers such as CNN and NY Times) who use it to distribute information. You just have to follow the right people. It is extremely easy to update/distribute information to a large group of people in seconds, and it’s also very easy to ask for information about any issue, new technology, etc. in seconds as well.
So, while Twitter will not replace my use of instant messaging, text messaging, and myspace, I do look forward to getting more familiar with it and getting good information from it.
Here are websites that had useful information on Twitter/Mircoblogging:
http://www.toprankblog.com/2008/05/top-10-twitter-uses/
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/5-ways-to-use-twitter-for-good.html
http://www.insidecrm.com/features/101-twitter-uses-052008/
http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/2007/12/the-10-ways-i-l.html
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Laura--I share your views of healthy skepticism while acknowledging the widespread use of Twitter. 'Good sources, also. Have you seen its use for breaking news from local TV channels, e.g., http://twitter.com/ktvb ? That seems like it could be useful.
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