Links! (For people to follow and Interesting Stuff from those already on Twitter.)
Indigenouspeoplesrights (5/10)
16 People on Twitter Who Inspire the World (4/10)
Twitter is a Web Two social networking many to many rippling micro blogging application. You tweak (post) what you're doing, or some news item, or post a picture, or ask a question, or make some observation, or whatever. You have followers. They receive your tweat. The tweats are authored and read via various platforms: twitter.com, mobile device applications, SMS (Short Message Service, AKA text message), (other things using the Twitter API,) etc.. Someone receiving a tweat may never even read it. They might just read it and that is all. They might direct message you back. They might re-tweat your tweat; if they re-tweat then the tweat goes to their followers. The retweat is not so much an official feature or function of Twitter so much as simply putting "RT" at the start of your post. All twits (or people on Twitter) have followers and are following others. Someone you follow need not be following you, and visa versa. The idea is that networks or communities or cliches develop. Twitter is asymmetrical, whereas many other social networks are symmetrical. Direct messaging requires some following though. One of the unique things about Twitter is the 140 character limit. This is the existing established size of SMS messages, minus a few characters for Twitter overhead. One manifestation of Art is creation within defined boundaries - here, not really, but ostensibly, every message is a Haiku, thoughtful composed to convey real meaning and connect with the reader. If you think of everyone on Twitter as a mini-blogger, then instead of going out to all their blogs or reading the blogs by way of RSS or a blog aggregator, you're choosing, or filtering, which blogs to read by who you follow. The twittersphere is ginormious. It's an application sitting on the Internet where millions of people are sending out many many posts each day. Obviously no-one can read them all, so many many niches exist. These little groups overlap and stuff pops around twitter (partially via re-tweats and hashtags), rippling (as per the title sentence) from one community to the next.
" Twitter "
is a reflection of our collective self. It also reflects
the state of the world. (via @Deepak_Chopra)
Sign up, basically picking a username and password. Start following people. Invite people to follow you. Tweat. Create a profile: picture, descriptive text, wallpaper for your profile page. Search for people geographically if on a mobile device with GPS-like awareness. Search for keywords of interest in other's tweats. Watch the twittersphere in real-time! Or watch the trending topics. Once you find an interesting tweat, look at the tweater's profile and see if you'd actually like to read most of their tweats - are they too frequent, too in-frequent, mostly good reads? As you tweak and create a profile and interact with others you'll get your own tweeps ("peeps" twitter-ized - see Tw* section for more).
Twitter Support: Safety: Keeping Your Account Secure - http://help.twitter.com/forums/26810/entries/76036
Tip: Better not to tweat than to be banal.
Tip: Some say the RATIO of how many you follow to how many follow you reveals something about your personality...
Tip: 10 Ways To Be Useful on Twitter
Keeping Twitter Relevant: The Art of Unfollowing
Zen and the Art of Twitter: 4 Tips for Productive Tweeting “I have no idea. Ask the horse!”
![Twitter messages may be tagged using hashtags, a word or phrase prefixed with a #, such as #beer.[21] This enables tweets on a specific subject to be found by simply searching for their common hashtag, provided that the user has tagged his or her tweet. Meanwhile, the @ sign before a username, such as @example, is used to distinguish a reply directed at that user. A message preceded by the @username prefix can still be read by anyone, but is treated as directed firstly to the user in question. This capability was initially called @reply, but was later renamed more descriptively as a "mention."](pix/twittertags.jpg)