Twitter

Forget Twitter. Sure, it's the future and it's impossible to forget something that hasn't happened yet, but it's going to destroy mankind.

Twitter...perfect name. It's the compulsion to communicate innit.

Far be it from me to disparage the delights of twittering. Each to his own I say. Course I'm still struggling with myspace.

Well I haven't got much space and my wife twitters in it all day; it can be very texting.

I'm hoping neural implants develop to the point where we can do away with a lot of these other gadgets.

I like it

What is it? Anything like Facebook? J x

I see you've been waiting patiently for 18 hours jennifer so I will try to explain: Apparently (I haven't signed up) Twitter is pretty much what the name implies. It allows people to give each other up-to-the-minute status reports...I am picking my nose...I am about to jump off a tall building...that kind of thing. Ideally one has a handful of followers that one knows personally hanging on one's every Tweet. You can also use it for marketing and self-promotion. For that you try to get as many followers as possible and direct them to your blog, website etc. and sell them things. Obviously the more you have the more your message gets viewed. Responses however are not guaranteed. A 2% click rate is considered quite good unless you are Oprah Winfrey or Tom Cruise in which case you will be inundated with adoring fantwits. Hope this helps. I should add I get all my information from my son who is like totally into IT.

I go through phases on it, sometimes I'll tweet several times in a day, others I won't look at it for a few weeks martyj21 btw - follow me!!! it's kinda cool messaging the celebs on it, cooler when they answer you, it can be used as a marketing tool, some people use it to keep in touch with mates, it is instant, like a diary in a way, although limited to 140 characters

Yes but it's quite hurtful when the celebs ignore you. I've just about given up on Beyonce.

I use twitter for microjournal updates on deviantart. Mainly for stuff that I just can't be arsed writing a whole journal for. IE, "watching such and such a show and its awesome" "finally got to level X on game Y" "help! I've got a 10'000 essay due in tomorrow and I've done cack all on it!" You know, the sort of stuff that doesn't actually take more than 160 characters to talk about. Since you can publish it via RSS (and widgets on certain sites) its also a great way to share cool weblinks and stuff. Twitsig is also a great service that turns your latest twitter into an image that can be used a signature on many web forums. Especially useful if you constantly change your sig. Just set uo a twitter account specifically for that purpose. As some have suggested, it can also be used to keep in touch with customers and fanbase by providing an interactive two-way form of RSS content. I've also seen some public services use twitter. The company that runs the local tram service uses twitter to notify customers about potential service disruptions. Just subscribe to their account and get instant notifications sent straight to your chosen RSS reader or cell phone. In the end, twitter is what you make it out to be. At its core, its a system that publishes SMS-style messages to the internet that can be either be read through their web portal, viewed through a sites widget or offline application, or syndicated by an RSS feed. Like email, it's how YOU use it that determines whether its a useful service or not.