What the hell is twitter?

So, it's been a while since my last post.. I've been busy, sorry about that.

In the last few weeks, a couple of my friends have joined twitter, but most people just don't understand what it's for. So let me try and help..

What is it?

Twitter, on it's most basic level, is very similar to Facebook status updates. You basically have 140 characters to say whatever you want to say, and it's public for anyone to view. If you want to receive updates from a particular person, you "follow" them. They don't have to confirm/deny such requests - the idea is that every "tweet" is public, and by following them, Twitter just sends the updates to your home page.


Why's it such a big thing?
First of all, it's a way for you to keep friends updated on what you're doing. Some people joke about twitter being too intrusive, with people tweeting about every little thing they do. That's not generally what happens.. nobody wants to read that kind of stuff.
But for example, you might tweet that you're going to a particular restaurant or club tonight; other tweeters might see it and let you know they'll be there too. You can post pictures of things you've come across. Or you might tweet a link to a news article or blog that you find interesting, and you think people might want to read about. The whole point of twitter is the real-time nature of the thing. After maybe an hour, new tweets have fallen off the end of your timeline (or news feed). So you're only reading the newest and freshest tweets. Of course, you can go back and check the previous tweets, but the idea is that you're kept updated.


Because twitter's real-time, it's a really good source of breaking news. For example, you can follow twitter accounts of news organisations, who post updates as and when news breaks. There's also a list of "trending topics", for you to see what people are talking about (it looks for common phrases in all the tweets).

There are loads of celebrities and famous people on twitter, as well as tech bloggers and news organisations. Even Barack Obama has a twitter. They all use it to give updates on what's going on, generally to keep people informed of breaking news and things they're involved in. Some of these accounts are just maintained by marketing teams, but you'd be surprised how many celebrities tweet for real.



How's it different to Facebook?
The idea of Twitter is to publicly post updates to anyone in the world, whereas Facebook is for actual friends. You wouldn't want to become Facebook friends with someone in America, just because they wanted to follow your updates.. that's seem weird. And they'd be able to see your wall & photos.. But you wouldn't mind them following you on twitter, because that's the whole point.
Twitter's great for reaching large numbers of people too  - if you want to get the word out about something, it's possible to reach hundreds of people at once by just posting a tweet. You can even ask people to Re-tweet you, which means they would send your tweet out to all of their own followers in turn.
You can also tweet about trending topics, and join in with discussions using the hashtag feature, basically typing #topic  in your tweet somewhere  (replacing topic with the actual topic involved)


Hopefully that's given some people an idea of what twitter's about. There's a load more uses for it, but that's just the basics. Maybe see you on twitter soon? My account is twitter.com/Kishen_R .. follow me =)