Why I’m On Twitter and Why You Should Probably Also Be
Posted: Sunday, June 20, 2010
by Joel Kontinen
http://joelkontinen.blogspot.com/
When I first heard about the microblog service called Twitter, I was a bit suspicious. I did not see any need for writing short 140-character messages on the Internet. After all, what could one possibly squeeze into a sentence or two?
However, as I got to know more about Twitter, I had to change my mind. I found out for instance that a writer had written or tweeted, which is Twitter-speak for writing, an entire novel on the microblog. The only downside was that he had to begin at the end. A missionary hopes to tweet the entire Bible, verse by verse, in two years. So there was more to Twitter than disclosing what you had for breakfast this morning.
However, while many if not most people on Twitter mainly post links, Twitter is above all a social networking site, which means that it is not primarily about you but rather your network. There are all sorts of discussions going on all the time. While you cannot say much in 140 characters, you can learn to be concise.
An interesting possibility is the re-tweet (RT) feature by which you can send messages to your followers that others have originally sent. Akin to the "like" button on Facebook, it is a way of saying that you like that what someone else has posted. About a third of my tweets are retweets.
I have now been on Twitter for almost two years and have no intention of saying adieu to the microblog. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/joelkontinen. I will most probably follow you back.
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