TWITTER – How Do You Tweet?

Twitter is a massively popular online service that I use alongside Facebook and Livejournal to keep in touch with friends and make new contacts throughout fandom and real life. I’ve recently started to step up my use of Twitter and have started using twhirl to Tweet from my desktop. How do you use Twitter?

Why Do You Tweet?

I’ll admit, I was a little late to the Twitter party. I didn’t really know much about it until I saw it mentioned on a Penny Arcade strip. At first, I was a little curious about it but I didn’t see the point of it at first. It was only after I started to develop my blog with Thesis that I discovered what a useful tool it could be. I don’t like to think of myself as a sheep – for example, I didn’t buy into the whole MySpace craze when it came along. I just stuck it out with my Livejournal because it was more suited to my needs at the time. The question remains; why did I start using Twitter?

Twitter is just another means of communicating with friends

It’s true. Sure, it has lots of other uses, but one of the simplest is the ability to add friends and have it act much like a friends page on Livejournal. In fact, most of the people I follow on Twitter are friends I made on Livejournal previously, but instead of reading their posts every morning, I’m reading their Tweets.

Twitter makes it easy to keep up to date with the news

I still primarily use the RSS feed in Apple Mail to read my world and fandom news, but when I’m not at the computer it’s nice to be able to get quick updates. The fact that most news sites are using Twitter nowadays to increase readership just makes it a better place to catch the news.

Twitter is a valuable promotion tool

As I mentioned above, this is something I only really found out once I had actively started developing my blog. All the best bloggers use their Twitters to link to their latest blog posts and retweet important articles, so why shouldn’t I? I don’t know how much difference it’s making to my blog readership, but I have noticed that every day I get some more people following me. They’re going to see my updates, so hopefully it does something.

Twitter’s character limit is a good size

I love blogging. A problem I have is wanting to bring attention to something awesome, such as a new music video or a live performance, but not wanting to dedicate an entire post to it. Twitter seems to fill that gap. Sure, sometimes I wish I could write a little more, but if I really needed to, I could Tweet again.

How do you Tweet?

When I first started Tweeting, I simply used the default online method at Twitter.com to post because I don’t like installing extra programs on the computer unless I think it’s going to bring me repeated use. As I started to Tweet more and more, I realised that a program would useful to me and decided to try some out. They’re in the order that I that I’ve tried them.

Online: Twitter.com

Back when I was fresh and first started using Twitter, I just made my updates from the main page at twitter.com and that was that. To be fair, I think I only ever made about six or seven updates because it wasn’t yet a service that I was using often. Sufficed to say, I hadn’t quite realised it’s true potential yet.

Desktop: TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a beta release but is used by a lot of people as I understand it. I first tried this out after hearing it referred to on a Penny Arcade podcast (opens in iTunes). The UI was really appealing to me with it’s big windows and wide display mode that made it particularly easy to keep track of direct messages, ReTweets and replies. In the end I found Ping.fm and seeing as TweetDeck doesn’t yet have support for this, I uninstalled it.

Online: Ping.fm

I had decided that I would use Ping.fm because it enabled me to post once, and have that post synced with a number of my other online accounts such as Flickr, Facebook and of course, my Twitter. This made it a lot easier for me to spread the word and get the message to the largest number of people whenever I wrote a blog post or uploaded a podcast on my YouTube. I’m a sucker for convenience being lazy.

Mobile: Nambu

I’m still using this on my iPod touch because it has Ping.fm support and operates in much the same way that twhirl does. It makes it really easy to check Twitter at work and reply to Tweets that I like. This is where I get the most from the news Twitters that I’m subscribed to because I can’t get at my RSS feeds.

Desktop: twhirl

twhirl is my current Twittering tool of choice and while I initially didn’t like the UI, I’ve grown to see past it to what convenience potential laziness it brings me. Since I downloaded it, I’ve had it open on the right hand side of my screen in much the same way I keep my Adium contact list open at all times. twhirl makes it easy to Tweet, to ReTweet, and to use the service as it was intended. I always felt it was a bit of a pain having to load the Ping.fm page up, but this enables me to see them as they come in and respond easily.

Final Thoughts

People use Twitter for all kinds of reasons and in many different ways. I’m exactly the same and I don’t foresee me giving it up anytime soon. Sure, sometime in the future, another service will probably come along and people will start to move that way, but we all remember MySpace, don’t we? That was the greatest thing since sliced bread for the longest time before other services, such as Facebook came along and now we don’t hear of it anymore. Basically, enjoy it while it’s here.

Before you go, below are some of Twitterers that I follow. Check them out:

• Pearsonified – The man behind Thesis.
• Kristarella – top blogger and Thesis helper.
• Tablo – lead man of EPIK HIGH.
• mapthesoul – straight from the MapLab!

And finally, before you run away to comment on this wonderful post, you can follow me on Twitter by click here. Happy Tweeting!