Obviously it won’t be as helpful in a power outage or similar situation, but sure, you can use twitter by going to the twitter website or by running any of a number of programs on your computer.
I’m not sure where people get the idea that having a source of information requires you to be constantly consuming that information. Actually, a metaphor that’s often used is drinking from a fire hose - you can drink as much as you want, any time, but you can’t drink it all and why would you feel obliged to?
I mostly read other people’s posts (tweets), but sometimes post stuff of my own.
I use Twitter mostly as a news source - I follow many local newspapers and news reporters, and news often breaks on Twitter before almost anywhere else.
Obviously, you can’t fit a whole news article into a tweet, but tweets often link to longer articles.
Do you drink? Are you bipolar? If the answer to both is no, then you could possibly twitter away without consequence. If you’re not planning to tweet(?) then…what’s the infernance of “twitter following?”…meaning “Reading other people’s tweets because they lead more interesting lives”. I dunno…wouldn’t work for me. I already feel deprived/suicidal because our neighbor gets their Sunday paper delivered, and we don’t.
You don’t have to follow someone because they “lead more interesting lives,” you can follow someone because they might have information that you need or find useful or is interesting in and of itself.
I’m into movies so I follow a lot of movie people. Too many. I’ve culled my Follow list and it’s still hard to keep up. I’m really bad about keeping up. I go through phases. I keep up for a while, then don’t read anyone’s tweets for weeks. I tend to read more during awards season. I used to interact with people a lot but I lurk more now. I do tweet all the movies I see and several critics and film journalists and movie people follow me (I think the coolest is the director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas). I’m not sure why these people follow me. I don’t interact with them much, but it’s fun to know they’re out there. It’s also nice to know that I can send them a direct message if I want (you can only Direct Message people who follow you). I rarely tweet anything personal regarding what I’m up to outside of movies and music. That would be boring and add to people’s noise level. If I do I almost always delete the tweets within a day or so to avoid my movies getting too far apart.
Twitter is what you make of it. Tweet if you want, or never tweet at all. Follow 2 people. Follow 10. Follow however many you want, but twitter is mostly useful if you follow people you really want to read, otherwise good tweets get lost in the noise of people who really have nothing to say, but tweet it anyway.
My kids haven’t made me do it yet. I don’t know if they Tweet, but they insist on me being on Facebook, so I will follow their leads on Twitter as well.
I simply cannot understand the whole hashtag thing. I THINK the hashtags are meant as a way to search for topics, but they seem so random that I don’t see how anyone can search for anything. I wish I could remember the example I saw the other day, but basically it looks like people use the hashtag to continue their comment, not label it.
I just do not think I have enough time in my day to add another layer of noise.
I really don’t like using net abbreviations, nor do I like reading them. I rarely use them in texts or posts except for the LOL and OMG. (I type this fully aware that I just used IIRC in a post for the first time ever.)
I don’t see any reason not to try it. You may like it, may not. I tried it, never could get into it. I figure whenever anything groundbreaking happens on twitter I’ll find out about it down the grapevine. I certainly understand it. Part of it is probably because I can be a bit wordy and got tired of spending 15 minutes on a tweet trying to massage it into the character limit without resorting to txtspk shortenings. This is my own failing and I really need to learn to be more succinct, but I just couldn’t get into the whole thing.
That said, if I ever started a company I’d probably be on it in a heartbeat, both for minor promotional advertising stuff and to have a good vector to quickly spread messages like “servers are back up” or “new update tomorrow” or whatever.
I don’t use it either, but I like Tumblr in concept more. It’s a lot like Twitter, except with the option to type a manifesto complete with pictures if you feel the compulsion.
And see, I don’t get the point of Tumblr whatsoever other than it’s a “microblog”, whatever that means. And from what little I’ve seen of it, people seem to be using it as an actual blog instead of a “microblog”, whatever that means.
If I had a business to promote, I know I’d have to have a presence both on Twitter. I get the feeling, though, that given how many people are on it, and how many tweets are sent into the universe every minute, it becomes more like everyone’s talking but nobody’s listening…
Yeah, but you don’t have to follow those types of people if you don’t want to. Do you read every single thread here? Is this place god-forsaken because lots of people post things that are inane and silly and uninteresting to you?
It’s ridiculous that people put down Facebook and Twitter on…a message board.
I’m a Twitter lurker. I signed up just so I can read Ke$ha’s occasional pearls of wisdom. I also started following an acquaintance just to humor him, but now I’m mad that his boring-ass tweets intermingle with Ke$ha’s on my feed. I worry that if I unfollow him, he’ll somehow find out, get offended, and come after me with a switchblade knife.
I haven’t signed up, but occasionally I go to sports writer Gerry Sandusky’s Twitter page just to see how many people have confused him with Jerry lately.
Useless punchlines. These account for roughly 90% of all hashtag usage. Usually placed at the end of tweets, they typically can be read as a parenthetical. Example: “OMG, I accidentally brushed my teeth right after drinking OJ! #MostAwfulTasteEver” Clearly, the twitterer isn’t going to be utilizing #MostAwfulTasteEver as a folder, searchable phrase, etc. - he’s just using it as a comment on the rest of his tweet.
Accidental or ignorant. Account for about 5% of all hashtags. There are plenty of twitterers out there that have absolutely no idea how or why to use hashtags, and just seem to sprinkle a “#” in wherever they think it looks nice, typically in front of nouns. Example: “I #took my #daughter to buy her #first package of #tampons today. How #exciting - she’s #becoming a #woman!”
Promotional. 4.5% of all hashtags. People will hashtag their movie, their album, their product, their pretty much anything that they want to get trending. For instance, Mike Birbiglia will try to get his movie some publicity, and hashtag the name of it, #SleepwalkWithMe.
Useful. Account for about 0.5% of all hashtags. These range from timely to humorous. Timely would be for things happening in real time - the Iranian protests, a Major League Baseball game, a presidential debate - that you can search for and watch new tweets with that tag come through. For instance, tonight you could watch the #NLCS feed during the game tonight. Or if you’re more politically minded, you could follow #debates. For humorous, you’ll typically see comedians take a concept and run with it. Patton Oswalt has a running #GentleTweets gag (it’s not that funny).
It’s been my experience that 95% of tweets that use net abbreviations aren’t worth reading in the first place. Despite most complaints from 15 year old girls, 140 characters is actually quite a bit of space to provide concise content. If you’re using Twitter correctly, you should be able to either get your point across, or link to a website that has the capability of expanding on that point.
