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What is Twitter?

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Twitter was born in 2006, and it was originally a small community of people sharing what they were up to at a particular point in time. At first, it was actually somewhat annoying as most posts were something along the lines of “just went to the bathroom”, “I just burped”, “I just said hello to Grandma on the phone”, etc. It is amazing how something seemingly so simple and annoying could morph into something definitive in which the brand becomes synonymous as a verb. I often say I just “twittered” on Buzz – oops. Unfortunately, there is also the negative connotation associated with the ‘Fail-Whale’ which is displayed when Twitter servers are down or overloaded.

Twitter Fail-Whale

Today, every major news organization, company, media organization, local governments and even politicians have a presence on Twitter either to disseminate information, or gather it. Many very smart people are scrambling to develop applications for their API and ways in which to monetize Twitter usage. Since all material on Twitter is public, it is a very valuable real time commodity to tap into for those who can mine the useful and relevant materials.

Twitter’s self description is “a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

In essence, Twitter is a communication tool where individuals and entities can send public and private messages, known as DM’s (Direct Messages), with a maximum limit of 140 characters in length. (UPDATE: As of today, June 9th, 2010, Twitter has added an automatic URL shortener that will exclude the link from the 140 character limit.) These messages then show up on your timeline, along with messages from those you follow on Twitter. When you follow someone on Twitter, you will see all their public Twitter messages in your timeline. The other party may or may not add you in reciprocal so you may end up following many more people than follow you, or vice versa pending your celebrity status or popularity. You may want to be careful of how many people you follow as if you just follow everyone or anyone you come across, you’re time line is going to become quite hectic and probably irritating to follow. When you post a message, anyone following you can take a variety of actions:

Respond to your message with a return message.
They may follow you if they just found your message via a search or a retweet
They may also retweet your message which sends your message to all their followers in the form of RT @yourname yourmessageishere.

Retweet

Share a link you twitted with additional comments

Uses of Twitter

Twitter is best used as a tool for real time communication from your friends, family, colleagues, organizations, businesses, schools, etc. Many journalists and bloggers now “live-tweet” conference presentations and speeches which provides a timeline of event happenings. Obviously, Twitter is a great way to break live news and report live happenings of events as they happen. Many news items are first reported on Twitter before they appear on websites and television news broadcasts. Many tweets from individuals directly involved in a news story are massively retweeted and shared all over the Internet. All this real time information has made the Twitter service a de-facto ‘live’ search engine powered by Twitter users.

Another popular use of Twitter is to promote stories and material being posted on your blog. Many of the third party tools available (more on these later) allow you to automatically have your blog post generate a tweet that gets posted to your timeline. This functions in a similar way to RSS feeds, but it’s very useful and timely to those who use Twitter regularly.

Businesses can use Twitter for Customer Service. This is something I’ve experienced recently where I’ve received responses to support inquiries via Twitter Direct Messages. Used properly, Twitter can be used as a very quick way to resolve customer problems if it is basic. If a more thorough accounting is needed, the company can use Twitter to initiate a conversation via email or instruct the customer which phone number to call and perhaps a ticket number for reference. This can lead to not only cost savings as it may reduce the need for larger and costly call centers, but also an improved public image.

Sharing Images on Twitter via Twitter image sharing services is the primary way to do so. Although there are other methods, the image sharing services are the easiest and most convenient IMHO. Twitter does not directly support image attachments, so numerous third-party services have popped up to provide this much needed and popular feature. Some of the more popular services are:

Sharing Videos on Twitter is very similar to sharing images and pictures. The primary third-party sites for video are:

Sharing Music on Twitter is not so much about actually ‘sharing’ music, but it’s about sharing what you’re listening to. Like sharing videos and images, there are numerous third-parties with applications to help you share your music listening information on twitter. The most common are:

Lastly, Twitter is a great place to ask questions, network with others in your profession and build a career network, arrange “Tweet-Ups” of fellow Twitter users in your local community, and any other social activity that requires a convenient and timely communication medium.

Setting Up a Twitter Account

Obviously, the first step in setting up a Twitter account is to visit Twitter.com. Setting up an account is very easy to do.

Multiple Twitter Accounts

As more and more people use Twitter for both personal and professional purposes, it’s becoming much more common that people have multiple Twitter accounts. Many third-party applications now help you manage multiple accounts and allow you to post to them separately, at the same time, schedule tweets, etc.

Twitter Groups

Twitter groups allow you to put people and organizations you follow into groupings. This allows you to send messages to certain groups of people. You may have a family group, co-workers group, friends group, or any other type of group that would suit your purpose of grouping the Tweeters together. Similar to many of the above features, there are numerous third-party solutions to creating and managing groups. A few of the more popular ones are listed below:

Customization of your Twitter Profile Page

One of the best ways to ‘brand’ yourself on twitter is to customize your background image on your twitter profile page. Twitter gives you the ability to upload background images which you can use for self-expression and more recently as a way to include information for organizations such as web links, contact information, etc. Here is a screenshot of my current background that contains the Hustedia and Husted Visuals logos. I am currently working on a new background that represents the current state of Husted Enterprises with more relevant information, but for now this is what I am using.

SBHylander Profile Background

The method of changing your background is fairly simple. To do this, just go to settings à design à change background image. You will now be able to browse your computer and select any image you like as long as it is not larger than 800k in size.

One area to be mindful of is the actual dimensions of your background. If it’s too small, key components of it may be hidden behind the actual timeline of your Twitter page. If it’s too big, parts of it will be hidden from those who visit your page who have a lower resolution monitor setting. Therefore, you will want to make your background about 1600px wide by 1200px tall so that you avoid any “tiling” of your background which would look horrible. You want your left hand column, the space to the left of your primary twitter timeline, to be about 235px or less to avoid any content from being hidden under the timeline box.

There are many resources to help you with your background choices. A few of the more popular ones are:

FreeTwitterDesigner – Contains a simple image editor.
Peekr – Peekr is a bookmarklet that allows you to view others backgrounds without any of the primary Twitter content showing.
MyTweetSpace – Allows you to create badges, text, add graphics and left hand columns. If you login using your Twitter account, MyTweetSpace will handle uploading your background for you as well.
TweetStyle – Gives you free background templates, backgrounds, and helpful tips.
TwitBacks – Very useful tool for left hand column background creation.
TwitterGallery – Provides Twitter “themes” designed around various colors and categories. Like MyTweetSpace, if you login using Twitter it can automatically load any theme to your Twitter account for you.

Have fun and don’t be afraid to experiment!

Privatizing your Posts

Some people believe in ‘privatizing’ their Twitter profile. They aren’t interested in Twittering to the public at large and only want people they allow to see their profile and communicate with only those people.

Key Terminology

Timeline – A list of tweets in chronological order
Twitter Stream – Usually an alphabetical list of tweets
Twitterer – Someone who uses Twitter
Twittering – To send a message on Twitter
Tweeting – To send a message on Twitter
Tweet – A message posted on Twitter
Twitosphere – The community of Twitterers
ReTweet – Re-posting a message sent by another Twitterer
#hashtag – A word(s) that is prefixed with a hash symbol to identify it’s topic
#followfriday – Twitterers often list people with the #followfriday hashtag to recommend other Twitter users to be followed.

Searching Twitter

You can also search Twitter for users and topics. If you have a particular search you use often, you can save searches in Twitter.

Additionally, you can go to search.twitter.com and search.twitter.com/advanced to really narrow down your search results.

Mobile Phone Platforms and Applications

Twitter is arguably perfect for the mobile platform. With a maximum 140 characters, typing out tweets on a mobile phone is very obtainable and easily accomplished, particularly to those who are proficient at typing on these devices from sending text messages. Whether you are on a Blackberry, iPhone, Android, Microsoft Mobile, or Palm – chances are that there is a Twitter application available for your phone.

Popular Third Party Tools

Final Tips

Finding more followers – The fastest way to find followers is just to tweet regularly with interesting and insightful comments, answer other Tweeter’s messages to you, and generally be polite and courteous on the site. Avoid verbal abuse and confrontational messages to manage your Twitter reputation. Just like your real life reputation, you can develop a bad rep on Twitter as well.

Clean out who you follow – no spam accounts, etc. Remove those whose post you don’t find interesting and don’t read.

AVOID SCAM SITES THAT ADD FOLLOWERS FOR YOU. Search your google and facebook accounts for twitters in your contact list.

Look at twitter directories and lists

Publicize your Twitter Username. Put your Twitter name on your business cards, websites, blogs, Google Profile, site badges, forum signatures, etc.

You can use a third-party application, such as SocialOomph, to schedule tweets ahead of time in case you won’t be available to do so manually. SocialOomph can also set you up to automatically follow everyone who follows you. However, I would recommend against this as you’ll begin following Spammers which will get annoying very quickly.

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