The Idiots Guide to Twitter

If you haven’t heard of Twitter then I would suspect that this might be your very first day on the internet. Twitter is everywhere and every blog you go to is writing about it, talking about it, using it and seems to be gaa gaa over the darn thing.

Up until a few weeks ago if someone said they wanted to “Twitter Me” then I’d have been ready to fight. You just don’t do that to someone where I come from. After reading about it everywhere though I decided to check it out and see exactly what it means when you “Twitter someone.”

What Is It

You are no doubt very familiar with Instant Messenger services or IMs, any boob who has ever managed to sign up for an AOL account has managed to figure IMs out. Twitter is a derivative of an IM type service or possibly even kind of like an online text message service.

It’s basically a website where you can sign up and create a profile for yourself and then send out or receive messages. You send TO your followers and you receive FROM those you follow.

After you “exist” in the Twitter world you need to find some people that you want to hear what they have to say. This is called “following” and you could describe it to kind of subscribing to their Twitter feed. If you”follow” someone then anything they broadcast will show up in your Twitter box.

If people elect to follow YOU then anything you broadcast will show up in their site etc. If you’re one of the more astute readers then you quickly realize that to be active on this service you want to both follow others and amass as many followers as you can. The wider your audience the more your message will be heard.

What Do You Do With It?

Getting set up and going is easy enough but the bigger question is what do you do with it? What value does it have? I struggled with this at first and I just really didn’t see the attraction to the service but I stuck to it to give it a fair shot.

Twitter can be tied into your cell phone so you can update your “followers” with a single message. You can share where you are going, what you are doing, what you are thinking, whatever you can fit in 140 characters or less.

I will warn you now, the more people you follow then the more messages you will get. Some Twitter users feel the need to share that they just burped with the world. It’s annoying at best because you want to continue to follow them but the useless stuff they post may outweigh anything of value.

Most of the people that I follow on Twitter use it to promote their content. They publish a tweet that points you to their latest blog posting. This seems irrelevant because typically anyone you follow on Twitter you will probably already subscribe to their feed anyways so it’s redundant in my opinion.

Is it the Next Big Thing?

Is Twitter the next big thing? Yeah I think it is, the popularity of it seems to be so widespread that I don’t see it losing any ground from here. I don’t think it’s anything revolutionary, if you were using GTalk or MSN messenger before you simply transition from there to here.

I keep reading about Twitter being addictive and people becoming wrapped up in it for hours and I have to say I think they are nuts. It’s kind of interesting, it provides a little bit of entertainment but I don’t sit there for hours waiting for tweets. If you do then seek help. Quick.

The real attraction I think is this, it’s very easy to sign up and start following someone like ProBlogger or DoshDosh. These are A-List bloggers that most D-List bloggers wouldn’t otherwise have access to and I think the D-lister thinks they are going to try to promote themselves on Twitter by sending tweets to their favorite A-Listers.

It’s an ego thing if you can get Darren to respond to you, suddenly you think you are friends. Reality will soon come crashing down because if you have to ask me, from watching from afar, it has to be pretty annoying to the A-Listers to have 200 different “little guys” tweating at them all the time.

I’d block them, in fact I already do. If you spam me with your useless crap I just block you and move on. I already get enough SPAM via email, I don’t need to hear about your groundbreaking new post “The Same List Post You’ve Already Read 100 Times but Worded Differently.”

5 Ways To Annoy People on Twitter

1. Meaningful - Send out annoying tweats that have no purpose. “Going to the bathroom, Eating Chicken Fingers, Watching a home movie” - Seriously who cares.

2. Groupie - Reply to every broadcast an A-Lister makes. “You’re so Right Darren, Good One Maki, Mark you’re so Funny, I agree Darren” - Replying to every single broadcast WILL get you noticed. It will get you noticed for being an annoying little twit. Do you really want that?

3. Spammer - Using the service for nothing other than post pumps. Seriously, most anyone that follows you will already be subscribed to your feed anyways.

4. Accidental Spammer - Not knowing how to use the Reply function will instantly make you annoying. If you want to respond to someone specifically then hit the reply arrow, otherwise every single one of your followers has to see your reply.

5. Insanity - Not Following Me - This is the best sign that you just don’t get Twitter. Make sure you correct that today.

Conclusion

Seriously Twitter can be a great social tool if you use it correctly. It’s a great forum to interact and communicate with your readers and those that you read. I can see it being a place where you can gather information for posts, opinions on posts, ideas for future content etc.

The best users of Twitter that I can see are those who don’t use it to Spam but rather to interact with others and develop a relationship. If you’re thinking about using it to drive traffic to your blog then forget it, if you want to use it to network and make some new friends then I would encourage you to give it a try.

I don’t know that Twitter will be around for the long haul as these things kind of tend to be a fad but in the meantime you can sign up for yourself and see what you can do with it.

I am sure that I might have missed some obvious benefits of Twitter and that may be why I am only a luke warm fan. If you love it, hate it or are lukewarm to it, then please tell me why.