Micro-blogging in 140 characters and less leads to some hilarious one-liners. Not as long, boring, and annoying as an actual blog but still gets the point across to those who care to read it.

Works for what it does. But it doesn't really do all that much...

Today, I tried on Twitter, but it only for mobile phone owners. that sucks. :(

The World is Your Follower:

Twitter is cool because you can follow anyone, literally see what anyone is doing without them having to follow you back. There is no approval process. So use the Person Finder at the top and search for anybody; celebrities, musicians, politicans, activists, charities, whatever you can think of. If they, in turn, follow you, that is considered a friendship and most of the time, that means you can send them a direct message from now on - like an Email, but more likely to be read.

The Stream Is Real (in Time)

Search and find, then follow. You'll notice a sudden stream of tweeted messages, in real time, showing up on your page. So Matt Damon is actually sitting somewhere typing what you just read right now. That's why it is popular. Everyone feels like they are in the next room. You can follow and be followed.

You Are It!

The more people that follow you, the more people that you can send your own news to. Become an activist for something. Become an expert on something. Post links to your blog articles. Or, just be a cool person that knows about interesting things. But the number one thing to remember is to be fresh and relevant. Don't post old news.

Followers = Power, Trust, Meaning

Be Your Own Virtual Oprah:

Where else can you get a thousand people to read what you just wrote for free? How about 10,000 or a million? Ashton Kutcher has over 2.x million followers. That means he is the Oprah of Twitter-world.

Some Tricks:

1. Follow and watch. See what other people are texting first. Start with simple posts and links to news articles. Don't SPAM people by advertising the same thing over and over or you'll get dropped quick by your followers.

2. Using the @ symbol in front of a username means that person will receive your message and anyone else searching for that username can see your message.

3. You can do multiple @names. Like @tweetmeme @TheRealWill @therealmattdamon you have to see this: http://tinyurl.com/...

4. Tweets.
This is what you are posting (also called an Update or Status Update or Message). You are limited to 140 characters so you have to be persuasive to get people to see it or click on your link.

5. Trends are fun. Watch the trends in your sidebar. If you see a trendword, use that in your post by putting a # sign in front of the word. If the trend is toysrus you might do #toysrus sucks and they treat their employees like crap or #toysrus I just bought a guitar for $99, down from $500, go to: http://toysrus.com/specials/...

6. Don't follow too many people in one day. There are limits and you will be made known of them if you break them. If you hit the 2000 following mark before 2000 are following you, you can't follow anybody else until there is a 10% ratio between following and followers.

7. Celebrity following and search limits.
You can follow celebs, but you can only perform X number of people searches in a day. There is a way around this. You can avoid breaking daily search rules by finding one person that might be connected with some cool people., then click on their Following link - you'll see the cool people they follow and most of the time, you have heard of them.

8. It's just another social network. You're not leaving Facebook or Plaxo to join Twitter. Don't feel like you are going to leave your friends. They are probably on Twitter too. Besides, you can do both at the same time. I do.

9. And last but not least: Twitter doesn't support image or video sharing directly so users can use a variety of third party Twitter API applications to do this. I personally use Twitc.com http://twitc.com - for sharing all my videos and photos and documents, and I also use Seesmic Desktop, Twazzup, Tweetmeme, and TwitterCounter for other various things. Share anything digital on Twitter with Twitc: Batch upload your files to Twitc and easily share them on Twitter. Just click on the thumbnail image of what you want to share on Twitter Click Tweet It! and enter a message. The URL is a public URL that anyone can access.

Ahhh I get it. I typed in "sex" because I am a perv and it is like text messages to strangers who don't care. They even made sex sound boring. Anyone I know that is not a virgin, doesn't say goofy crap like "sex on fire"...It looked like changing your Facebook status.
Not for me xD

I am not saying it's BAD, I bet most people who play on it also like to text message. Since I don't like texting, I don't like twitter. But do me a favor? If you twitter try to stand out. Make the site more interesting one twitter at a time.

At first I didn't quite understand why I needed Twitter, however now I am an addict. This site is really great for getting news, marketing, and keeping in touch with friends in 140 characters or less. I follow many news sites and its nice to have one place to open them all. Sure, I could have a RSS feed, but Twitter also allows me to stay in touch with my personal friendships, which an RSS will not allow! It's a super site, but I do wish there were more security settings!

My daughter can tweet, text and update her Facebook status all day long. I've looked over her shoulder and witnessed the invaluable broadcast of such gems as:
Tweet: just updated my Facebook status
Facebook Status: ...is tweeting...
Text mesasage: Hey girl did you read my tweet about Facebook? lol.

That's when I make her turn everything off and take me and the dog for a walk.

Back in my college days, I was involved in the making of a couple of films. One of the key elements was character development...making the characters interesting enough that you actually cared about them. This, of course, involves a filtering process, wherein, mundane things are filtered out... things that are implied... like eight hours of sleep, meals, getting somewhere, grooming and defecating and wiping. So, I always wondered what it would be like if someone allowed their entire day to be filmed and concluded that it would be unbearably boring. It is this kind of filtering that makes reality shows bearable (to some)...as only the "essence" of the day...things that are germane to subject at hand make it through. Yes, even following Monica Bellucci around for a day might be tedious (depending on creative camera angles).

I can, however, see the value in Twittering as a business application, where this app can replace emails that require mass cc'ing, or keeping up on trends and the competition. But, let's face it, unless you just spent your day vaporizing al Qaeda members with your M134 mini gun, or actually spent a day with Monia Bellucci, this form of vapid, self-indulgent, self-important narcissism is pathetic. My children Twitter and I visit from time-to-time and it gives me a sense of well-being that they are involved in some normal, healthy things, but kids...it is pretty boring to know what restaurant you ate at yesterday (sans a review of that restaurant).

Everybody's life, on a moment-to-moment (even day-to-day, week-to-week..even year-to-year basis) is pretty boring to other people. Only famous people and celebs can capitalize and this type of exposure. Hey! Here's a novel idea: why don't you actually go out and do something exciting, instead of trying to impress others with your visit to Starbucks, followed by a purchase at Home Depot...? I'd like to hear about that...

I see this as a phase in our current Paradigm of Immediacy that will taper-out as people realize that they're not getting any standing ovations and aren't being followed around by the papparazzi because of twittering. Socially, it's a technological dead end.

I dont understand the popularity of this bullshit site. Its just a glorified messanger to me. I believe its only a matter of time before Twitter fades away.

. . . I can't think of a single person whose thoughts are so interesting that I'm compelled to get an update 24 hours a day in 160-character increments. Not even my husband ( . . . actually, ESPECIALLY my husband. If you knew him, you'd understand.) And I'm not even going to pretend that I have anything that interesting to say that I'd go streaming it:

"6:30am: Woke up. Hit Snoozebar."
"6:39am: Woke up again. Hit Snoozebar."
"6:48am: Woke up. Again. Snoozebar. Again."
"6:52am: Cat jumps on me. Walks on me until she gets to my face. Demands breakfast."
"6:53am: Cat walks down to my abdomen and starts that kneading thing. Right where my bladder is. Now I gotta get up to go to the bathroom."
"6:55am: Cat demands breakfast at the bathroom door."
"6:57am: Putting in my contacts, get startled by alarm clock I forgot to turn off. Drop contact. Dammit."

Seriously, if you want to write a play-by-play of your life for your own purposes, go for it. I'll skip on the subscription, though.

I knew I would hate this. But under pressure from my daughter I tried it.

Now I don't hate it. I FUCKING LOATHE IT.

I would happily run down the inventor of this and tear his throat out with my teeth.

I have never been exposed to so much mindless, self absorbed, imbecilic, pointless drivel in my ENTIRE FUCKING LIFE.

I sincerely hope the foregoing has not been too ambiguous.

Great site~!

I love Twitter! It's a great way to keep in touch with local friends without having to send out multiple texts, calls or emails. It's the most convenient way to keep up to date about your friends lives. It forces people to be terse.

It's also a great newsfeed. I follow several ezines and if the tweet sounds interesting, I click on their link.

For all the haters, I recommend you try it first. I remember it sounded like the dumbest thing at first, but now, I hardly journal, or IM. I just Twitter. I love it!

I've been on twitter since its early days and have seen how the way its used have evolved over time. The worst way twitter demeans itself is by the tagline "What are you doing?" It is as detrimental to the site's image as saying blogs are just for venting out and whining about teenage life woes. but reality is despite how well you might paint an image of twitter or blogs, the undesirable does rear its head into prominence.
I have always missed the twitter IM bot, no other solution felt as easy as that one and yes I really need it back.
Absence of IM-bot possibly is one of the reasons for a large number of twitter clients with all the major ones being developed on Adobe AIR.

People outside twitter see all the unimportant tweets that come up at far larger frequencies than some worthwhile news piece. The only way users can keep the important and useful tweets current is to retweet or copy and post them again.

Twitter is a source that can update from a variety of interfaces as well as distribute to a variety of interfaces.
For me it's the place you tell the world what you think they'd feel worth knowing and when. When you do keep that in mind, you add value to the system with your timely informative updates. think citizen journalism for examples.

I used to remember livejournal being called the blog host that catered to whining teenagers for example, but thats not entirely true...there are some bloggers there with worthwhile information on there too...and ads....well, nevermind.

Somehow I feel celebrities should have their own twitter system...their popularity might make fail-whale jealous.

Really what's the point of Twitter? What need does it fill? What problem does it solve? What desire does it meet? Basically "Twittering" is a way of letting the world know what you're doing at the moment. At least that's how most people use it. You can update your account through their website or by text message.

I suppose that some have a desire to let other people know what they're thinking or doing at any given moment. To know that other people care about what they're doing! I don't know about you, but I don't really care about what anyone is doing at any given time.

I have enough of a life that I don't need to engage in high-tech voyeurism!! Do people really want to know my daily routine, when I go to the bank or to the grocery store, or what I'm doing at work at any given moment? I have a hard time believing that people do. And really, what truly substantive thoughts can you communicate with less than 140 words? The problem with a lot of social networks is that they encourage superficiality of thought.

I might just sign up for an account to see what its all about! Twitter does have some interesting marketing applications that make it a worthwhile venture. But I don't understand the social application of the site: if you want to let someone know what's going on, send a text message or call. Why sign on to Twitter to do the same?

Today basically a distributor for people who write blogs or invest in social media or just i don't know, maybe want to create something used by lots of other people that has to do with...i don't know.
Memories of the original chat services come to mind.
Memories of FIX in financial services, streaming anything is eye candy for a while until people get bored. Recall "push"? Pointcast?

Anyway, i use twitter to feel good about getting brainfarts out of my brain but there is little to no feedback loop so either my brainfarts are not interesting or people just can't ingest them or have time to ingest them. Today, it may be that the people who might want to read my brainfarts probably don't see them b/c they are already drowning it brainfarts from bloggers, spammers, whackos, or business people just basically "pushing their book".

I will admit that the first time some friends of mine told me that I needed to be on twitter, I was skeptical. But I signed up anyway. At first, I thought it was such a waste of my time, but it has actually become a source of amusement for me. And surprisingly, it has helped me keep up with some of my friends that I don't see often. 140 characters of "what am I doing" isn't enough to say a whole lot, but it does keep me that much more connected, and quite often, the "tweets" I receive are a source of amusement. My verdict? Probably not for everyone, but if you're connected and have a friend or two on twitter, it is entirely worthwhile, I know I have enjoyed it (and I wasn't a "twitterer" until just recently). (although, I will warn you that the consumption of alcohol and twitter via cell phone can be very...ummm...embarrassing but oh so amusing combination. ;)

People that are into Twitter are really into Twitter. I guess I haven't been infected yet.

Twitter is all the rage among SF geeks right now. It's a mobile network similar to Dodgeball that lets groups of people stay connected via SMS (or IM). The most common use of Twitter seems to be to blast out to the world (or at least your "followers") what you are doing at any given moment, e.g. "studying for a test," "going to the bank," etc.) For a full write up of how to use it, check out Rafe Needleman's review.