May 05 2008
Twitter and the masters of the Twitterverse!
I’ve been using Twitter for a while now, and I know when it is something that I believe is going to be useful when I tell my wife about it and sign her up. So if you are not using Twitter yet, let me tell you what it is.
Well it isn’t IM, and yet it is. It isn’t a blog and yet it is. And it isn’t a way to keep up with someone and find friends, and yet it is.
It is a way to chat with friends, meet new friends, keep up with people and read about what others are doing.
You can use Twitter via their web site, its real easy to sign up and get an account. I’m not going to go into that part of it here. Trust me it is simple. Once you have it then you can just use it to post your messages on the website. Then there is chat, using your favorite IM client (Pidgin) and your Google Talk account you can add a friend, twitter@twitter.com. Once you have done this, then you can chat your status/messages directly to Twitter. This doesn’t stop here either. I can only speak as to what I have, but I have an T-Mobile Wing. Using it I can also SMS to Twitter, and I run ceTwit on the phone so when I have a network connection I can also send and receive twits. Twits are by the way messages from other people. We’ll get into that in a minute. So I can send my updates and messages from web, chat, and phone while mobile.
Now when you add a friend, you can easily choose how you want to get updates. You can get them to any of the ways you can send, same as above web, chat, or phone. Just because you have a friend added you do not have to receive their chats via your phone for instance. You can set where you want to receive updates. I have several people I follow, and some are really chatty or I just really don’t want to know what they are talking about all the time. So I make sure not to follow them on chat and my phone. You can always check your Twitter site to see what people you are following have been saying.
A Blog you say? Yes it is a social blog. Remember what ever you chat on Twitter others will see. If you have clicked any of the Twitter links in this post you will see mine. It is NOT private, but then neither is IM unless you use a private server with encryption and we won’t get into that.
It ends up being either a I love it! or an I don’t get it? You will have to check it out for yourself to make that call. I also hear people saying it is a fad. I agree with that, but I see it leveling off in growth. I think it will stay around for a while. I can see a large company “Google” buying them. We will just have to wait and see.
Links for more information:
If you are a Birmingham Alabama Twitter user you can Follow Bhampulse (http://bhampulse.zerosource.org).
Twitters website is at http://www.twitter.com
Twitter Fan Wiki is at http://twitter.pbwiki.com/
Upcoming:
Brightkite review, so far not looking good!
AndLinux nice… run Linux (Ubuntu) in windows
Sun VirtualBox good… acquired VM system
