This weekend, I finally caved in and signed up for Twitter.
For those of you who haven’t heard of Twitter, or have heard of it but don’t really know what it is, Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging website. The motto of the service is to have people answer the question “what are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. These short messages, or tweets, are then posted on your Twitter page. You can also view the tweets of friends that you are following. But the most interesting thing about Twitter is the ability to use the service when you aren’t at your desk and sitting in front of your computer. Users can post updates through Twitter by updating at the website or text message from their phone, and can receive updates about what their friends are doing by text message, email, RSS and instant message.
I’m still trying to get accustomed to how I really want to use Twitter. I’m working on figuring out the balance of what to post and what not to post. It’s the balance of posting enough so that my posts are worth following, but no so often that they’re irrelevant and boring. I’m also trying to work out how this fits in with the other social networking sites that I utilize, specifically Facebook and LinkedIn. I figured that any more than two social networks, one for personal networking and one for professional networking, starts to exceed my social networking saturation point (I use Digg to discover notable articles, but I consider myself a passive user). However Twitter appears to work for me because it is very simple, has good reach, and integrates well with my Facebook account. My Twitter updates automatically update my Facebook status and also get posted in the side bar of The Pender Code.
So why does Twitter matter? It matters because it makes the next logical step in connecting social networking and the mobile interface. Twitter isn’t notable for what it is, but rather for what it adds to the social networking marketplace. It’s less notable for being a social networking service as it is for taking social networking to the mobile platform. Even if you don’t have an internet enabled phone, you can still use Twitter to network with those privileged members of your social graph, whether they’re online at the moment or not.
If you’re interested in extending your social networking to the mobile platform, I suggest giving Twitter a try (be sure to add me to your friend list, too!). I’m not saying you’ll fall in love with Twitter, but if you appreciate how technology enables you to stay connected in new ways, it may be an exciting new thing to check out.
