You may have heard of Twitter and thought of it as another way for people to waste time broadcasting their lives on the internet, much in the same way as people think of Facebook. But in fact it is a simple tool with a huge number of real-life applications.
What is it?
According to the Twitter FAQs:
“Twitter is a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time.”
Which means…..?
Well, in its simplest form you have a text box on a webpage, which will take up to 140 characters, and you use this to answer the question “What are you doing?” Used in this way, it acts as a kind of microblog which people can subscribe to and be notified each time you update.
Why should you use it?
So it sounds a little bit pointless, right? Who cares if you’re eating a cheese and cucumber sandwich for lunch? Well, Twitter can communicate much more useful information as well as the everyday lives of its users. Many businesses and blogs have Twitter accounts which they use to inform followers of new products or services, or new blog posts. People use it to make announcements, or to ask questions and advice of their friends who follow them. Nowadays, international news stories even seem to break on the “Twittersphere” before the news websites.
What can you do with it?
You can keep in touch with friends and colleagues, follow high profile people in your line of work to see what projects they are working on, get weather reports, receive instant sports scores, follow politics and elections, find out about local events, propose… 
The possibilities are endless!
There are also a huge host of other web services, such as Remember The Milk which use Twitter as a means of communication between the application and the user (such as by adding to do list items and receiving reminders), making it a valuable tool in many new ways.
How do you use it?
There are various ways in which you can update your Twitter status and receive the updates of others:
- Online through your web browser
- Via a desktop application such as Twitterific, Twitteroo or Twhirl
- Using your phone or other mobile device
- Via SMS (text messages)
- Using an IM chat client such as MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, GTalk etc.
How can I get started?
So how to begin? You can sign up here – and if you want, you can start by following us here at Inuda Innovations.
And as a special treat, here’s a great video which explains Twitter in plain English:
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