Twitter is a multiplatform social chatroom that allows you to converse with people around the world from anywhere in near to real time. It is knowing a rapid growth and so here are a few guidelines to getting started. 140 Characters If you thought 160 characters for SMS were limited then this limit will be even more of a challenge. That’s nothing to worry about yet, for now all you need to do is create an account and tell us what you’re doing.
Ed Richardson - Feb 2, 2009
You raise some very valid points here Richard and on the whole I agree with you.
I’ve recently gone through a Twitter cleansing process, dropping off a whole gang of folk, who although are well know in the Twitter stakes, were not adding any real value to my stream.
I am now hitting a much higher percentage of folk whom I’ve conversed with and therefore, most likely, shared some common ground.
In this article there are recommendations about who you should follow on twitter and I must admit I followed almost every one of them. I have unfollowed everyone of them except one. Chris Brogan. He’s the person whom I feel is most likely to answer a tweet directed at him. If you’re following someone for their ideas don’t follow them on twitter if they’re not going to converse with you. It’s a waste of time and you’re missing the gems from the smaller time twitter users.
elisa - Feb 2, 2009
Thanks for your kind words!
Elisa – @feedly
I really do like feedly, I was using it to check blog posts at the time when you were commenting. Works well for me.
Venture capitalists love to invest in something that works, something that’s concrete. If it’s got a 900% user growth rate overall and tripled in size in the UK alone then this is excellent. That’s the perfect website to invest in. Of course I’m speaking here of twitter. The 140 character twitter website that no one has time to use yet everyone flocks to. With the recent twestival you see that it’s gone local, and that can only mean one thing, that it’s gone mainstream.
Bernie Goldbach - Feb 5, 2009
I like Friendfeed because it helps me thread Twitter, just like Jaiku natively threaded posts.
I really like Friendfeed and what it’s becoming. What I love is how easy it is to follow many people and converse with them about everything they share. It’s the future of web sharing but it may take several months for people to move towards it. There are a number of things I love. First of all it aggregates your live stream in one place, so anyone who has an interest in you can share what they like about your work and you can follow this conversation.
When you first arrive on twitter it’s lots of strangers sending messages speaking about what they’re doing and it quickly becomes overwhelming, especially with the vast number of people. For the first few months many people send no more than a hundred posts a day as they get used to the twitter stream. Eventually with time they get into the swing of things and they begin to interact with the other users and this creates a sense of friendships.
warzabidul - Feb 4, 2009
What makes the first meetups so great is that you spend weeks and months talking to people, you develop a relationship with those people so that when you finally meet them you’re really happy. That feeling is made even nicer when you realise you have similar interests to people you had not met yet.
Now the tweetups and other meetings often feel like a formality, nothing fun, nothing innovative.
There is a video of me at the only Twestival event I have ever been to and I lay into the event for the fashionistas that attended the event. I was so disappointed with the event as a whole that I have lost my passion for going to social media events, especially when I need to travel over a thousand kilometers. Environmental conscience is one good reason for not travelling to these events but the second is the quality of the people there.