Making sense of Twitter
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009Updated: 2009.11.22
Most of my friends understand Facebook, and we have a great community going there. Here in the summer of ‘09 lots of folks are starting to ask what Twitter is good for — is it just where you encourage your too-chatty Facebook friends to redirect their energy? Why would anyone want to publish little 140-character tweets? Well, it turns out it’s a great way to ask & answer simple questions with a very wide audience, and to call attention to online articles — it’s a platform for public conversation, of sorts. To us old folks, it’s like CompuServe or newsgroups, without as much structure.
To start with the basics: I like AACC’s New to Twitter, and Global Neighborhoods’ 7 Tips for new Twitter users. Then Jeremiah Owyang’s How I use Twitter should make sense.
Next stop - most folks need more than twittter, to tweet. A Firefox plugin called Echofon (aka Twitterfox) helped me jump in, with two different twitter id’s — one personal & one professional. Integrating it into the browser or iPhone brought Twitter persistently into my web experience, without another program to learn. Echofon keeps it simple and lightweight.
You see, the important question is “How do I discover tweets that matter to me?” Which is, of course, the question of searching or filtering the universe of tweets. The ReadWriteWeb introduces “7 Top Twitter Topic Trackers“, as of April 2009, and my early favorites from that list are
- Tweetizen - it’s not “search” so much as “joining a group based on a search”
- TwitScoop - a cool way to see trends & searches
Done right, any twitter search site or tool should offer at least the search power available on Twitter’s own advanced search page — which is a perfectly good place to start. It gives you a live feed for your search results, announcing new tweets as they come in. So to jump into the live conversation, you just need that live feed of the topic you want to join in, and a way to write your own tweets — which could be as simple as a second browser window, or a plugin like Echofon. Simplicity is good.
There are lots of other options for tools - see Birdsall’s Massive Twitter Sites & Tools Directory. I’ve been impressed with PeopleBrowsr, which is browser-based … i.e. no new software to maintain, and available on any computer I sit down at. Be aware that any of the power tools have a commensurate learning curve.
Wondering about those #hashtags you see in some tweets? They’re a way of marking keywords, topics or a conference event related to your post. They are entirely optional, so don’t sweat it, just reuse what seems useful. See Ben Parr’s how-to article for more.
You’ll soon build an appreciation for the many ways Twitter adds value, and lets you join in the conversation — whether it’s a gushing trend or an occasional insight — as Guy Kawasaki so ably details. Oh, and keep your job — apply some common sense — as Douglas MacMillan explains in Twitter Code of Conduct.
Have fun! 
PS 2009.11.22:
The best collection of twitter articles I’ve found is on mashable.com. Browse through and you’re bound to find something helpful, including Twitter for Beginners, and their Twitter Guide Book.
So “Why would I want to do this Twitter thing?” The most valuable answers I’ve found are from Stephen Dinan, in “One Hour to Conscious Tweeting,” and “The Spiritual Importance of Twitter.” Follow Stephen on twitter to see how he puts that in action.
[Twitter’s] growth corresponds to the accelerating spread of a global consciousness, one in which our sense of boundaries no longer end at national boundaries and we are increasingly in touch with our sense of “oneness” with others.
