Twitter on the Move

By Vicki Donnowitz

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, and it’s moving so fast you must sprint to catch up. Take a look at this http://popacular.com/gigatweet/, over 1.1 billion tweets and going strong! Twitter is the fastest growing social network alive….a 752% increase in unique visits over the past year.

Have you seen it?  How could you not see it?  It’s everywhere…on CSI, in the

WSJ and Tribune on ABC, CBS, FOX, CNET, and the list goes on. As a matter of fact, Twitter was first on the scene of the U.S. Airways plane landing on the Hudson River!

Twitter is a free mobile social networking and micro blogging service that allows it’s users to send and read other user’s updates. You can post short, text based messages of up to 140 characters, 20-30 words in length that get delivered to mobile phones and PCs.

Here it is, “Twitter in Plain English”, view this video courtesy of CommonCraft. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o

Why would someone use Twitter? Lots of great benefits, get the latest breaking news; network with your whole group of friends in one short message; market your product, service, event or yourself; recruit your next employee, teammate, friend or date; updates at conferences on schedules, changes or events; or, use it just for entertainment and fun!

See if you can quickly say this tongue twister …Twitterers are Twittering Tweets on Twitter. Translation: Twitterers are people who use the service, Twittering is the activity of updating information, Tweets are the text based posts, and Twitter is the service.

Twitterers are followers. They simply follow one another’s messages by finding a person’s username and selecting a “Follow “option. This alerts the person you are following them, and they can reciprocally choose to follow you, or not. It is great to follow someone on a fabulous trip around the world, or a celebrity talking to their fans about their next appearance.

Each user has a Twitter page showing all of his or her updates, or tweets. It also shows the number of followers, the number of people the person follows and how many total updates have been posted. You can customize your Twitter page by uploading a photo to be used as a background. The icon representing each user can also be personalized, this is important because it appears beside that person’s tweets.

Each tweet that appears in your Twitter feed can be replied to using a shortcut arrow that appears beside the tweet, and these responses to tweets are called @Replies. These appear for everyone to see, and must start with @ plus the username of whomever you’re responding to. Direct messages can be sent only between people who are following one another. These are not posted publicly, they appear on your Twitter.com page in the right side section labeled Direct

Messages and will also be sent to your mobile device if you have one registered with Twitter.

You can save favorite tweets by selecting a small star beside the tweet. This is added to the Favorites section on your homepage. Anyone can see anyone else’s Favorites.

For the more advanced users, there is a growing list of applications and tools like Big Tweet, Digsby, Twitterlicious, MrTweet, and WiseStamp. Click here for a plethora of more http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps.

Twitter does a great job of giving people simplified news from anyone they follow; it is a good source of streamlined, quick information. Follow me at www.twitter.com/vkkg as I continue to tweet my way through this cool, easy to use social network tool.

Happy Tweeting,

Vicki Donnowitz

Vicki is a Business Advisor with Forward Progress and Broker/Owner of VKKG Associates, LLC, a Real Estate Investment Company. She has over 25 years of management experience as a senior executive in corporate, entrepreneurial and rapid growth companies. Visit her website www.vickidonnowitz.com. Email her at [email protected].