All the cool kids are using Twitter. No really, they are.
So just what is Twitter? I have been asked that, but I have a hard time coming up with an explanation. I usually fumble a bit and tell people that it’s like mini-blogging, with constant interaction with other Twitter users via the real time updates on the website.
Twitter is social networking, but on a bare bones level. When you sign up for Twitter, you can add information to a basic profile, which includes your username, name, location, one line bio, and a website address, if you have one. When you’re ready to go, you can update Twitter with whatever is going on in your life. Your updates will be archived and display on your own Twitter page, which is http://www.twitter.com/your_user_name. You can choose to make your updates public or protected. Public: anyone can see what you’re Twittering. Protected: only those on your friends list (on Twitter this is known as your followers list) can see what you’re Twittering. Please note that it’s an all or nothing thing with public vs. protected. Everything is public, or everything is protected. There is no in between.
You can update Twitter from the website, from many Firefox extensions, from desktop applications, from your cell phone by sending text messages to 40404, and from your cell phone with the use of mobile applications (I use TinyTwitter).
You may be asking, “How does this tie into blogging?” I’ll tell you how. You can use an active Twitter account to generate more traffic to your blog by posting updates of blog entries to it. You can do this manually, and also with the use of blog posting plugins that are available for many blogging platforms (including WordPress).
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