Please explain twitter to me.

[neeleymartin]

do i need to belong/join?

is it like a message board without replies?

how do you use it? any creative uses?

[Toba]

I do have a Twitter account, but only to follow a few people. I have *never* used it to "tweet." I can't remember if you need to join to follow people on Twitter ... that might be why I actually signed up because I knew I would never use it. I do know that there are several "friends" on Facebook that I WISH would use Twitter instead of telling me every minute detail of your daily life.

[hillview]

I use it for work at conferences etc to talk about cool things my company is doing.

Outside work I wouldn't bother.
/hillary

[bigpassport]

I am not a Twitter expert. The only thing I twit/tweet/whatever is MamaBargains.com. I have it sent to my cell phone as a text message every time there's a new Mama Bargain.

[lizzywednesday]

I use it in lieu of IM for a bunch of friends I wouldn't chat with otherwise.

All of my tweets are protected, which means in order to read my tweets you need to follow me. I only follow people I know IRL.

I am pretty sure that you can read the public stream without joining.

Lots of businesses are using it as quickie advertising and I know WPIX-11 in the NYC area is using it to enhance their news broadcasts (a friend follows them) so there are people expanding their uses of it every day.

One of the most bizarre ones I read about is a woman in the UK who tweets recipes. Entire recipes. In 140 characters or less.

[neeleymartin]

thanks for all the info.

i tried twice to figure it out by searching for relevant to me topics. the results are wacky.

i give up.

[Jo..]

I asked my DH the same thing, and he said that Twitter is where people post random vapid thoughts that no one cares about. So, kind of like facebook updates. :D (eta: yes, I do post fb updates myself...GUILTY)!

[tylersmama]

I signed up originally just to follow a friend who was competing in the world triathlon championships in Australia, and her mom was going to be tweeting from her account. I gradually picked up a few interesting people and companies to follow, and picked up followers as I started tweeting more. Actually, the biggest thing that I've used it for lately has been networking with other athletes who are part of the Brooks ID program (kind of a brand ambassador thing that I got accepted to, really cool). I've also won a few contests, including a $100 gift card. :D

[WatchingThemGrow]

DH uses it a lot. One acct for personal stuff, one for work. For the personal one, he has it as a sidebar on blog, so grandparents can "keep up" with the DC in between our infrequent posts. He'll put stuff up there like, "Mama found three naked kids rolling in cheerios after breakfast," or whatever bizarre thing is happening. Oh, he does temperature updates when someone's got a fever, ear infection, barfing or whatever. It keeps MIL from calling every other hour to ask.

Once he tweeted something about wishing he had popsicles and some cold medicine and she got it and brought it over. Maybe it's just like a weird way of texting his mom...

[kijip]

I can't explain twitter, because it is drivel to me. 150 characters? Or is it 120? Let's shorten people's attention spans more than they already have been. Awesome.

Not that I have an opinion, or anything.

To be fair, I can see that some people use it well or for work. Still, I don't care if people are in line to buy a sandwich or that their plane is late. If I need to know that, you can call me I guess. Katie the luddite. :)