Press "Enter" to skip to content

Why Would You Want To Twitter?

It’s been a couple of days since I signed up on Twitter and started playing with it, figuring out why it’s becoming such a craze. My first impression was that it was just to keep in touch with family and friends — kind of like a personal whiteboard where you scribble a few things to let your “followers” know what you are up to, and possibly where they can look for you, and things like that. You can certainly do that with Twitter, but how different is that from a blog or Facebook, or Yahoo 360, or Messenger status, I wondered.

I think I am beginning to appreciate what it is with Twitter that makes people want to use it. It is something like a mini-blog — essentially meant to be like an informal open diary. That’s what makes it attractive for people. Most people use their blogs to post articles that are more substantial; they don’t like to use their blogs like an open diary for their friends and family. Also, blogs are meant to be open and accessible to anyone, while Twitter lets you control who reads your updates.

I have seen many other interesting uses that people are putting Twitter to. There are customer support groups that post updates about products, coaches that send game schedules to their teams, and people traveling that let their familes know where they have reached and where they are staying. Twitter lets you post updates on the web or from your phone, and that makes it extremely convenient.

I decided to try using Twitter to post some notes related to this blog — stuff that I am reading, upcoming reviews, some new ideas that I stumbled upon, and so on. This way, I don’t have to clutter the main blog with informal notes and updates, and maintain them separately as “Editor’s Notes”  hosted on my Twitter account. What more, Twitter gives me a code snippet that I can use to publish my updates right on my blog page (look for “Editor’s Notes” on the sidebars).

Share:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Twitter
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Add to favorites
  • email
  • Google Buzz
  • MySpace
  • RSS
  • Slashdot
  • Technorati
  • LinkedIn

2 Comments

  1. […] yayu Says: March 9th, 2009 at 10:51 am Social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter have made it possible for people to make friends from all over as well as keep in touch with those they know. LinkedIn is a great example of such site – I know a lot of people who have used it to explore job prospects, locate potential sponsors for their projects. Twitter is a new addition to this list, and from what I can see, people are putting it to a lot of good use: http://blog.technicalley.com/why-would-you-want-to-twitter/ […]

  2. […] Social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter have made it possible for people to make friends from all over as well as keep in touch with those they know. LinkedIn is a great example of such site – I know a lot of people who have used it to explore job prospects, locate potential sponsors for their projects. Twitter is a new addition to this list, and from what I can see, people are putting it to a lot of good use: http://blog.technicalley.com/why-would-you-want-to-twitter/ […]