Why Twitter + Today's Tweets

I've seen a number of bloggers who also use Twitter during the day (a real-time community micro-blogging tool) put their days 'tweets' into a little blog entry every so often and thought I'd do the same - but in case you haven't heard about Twitter yet I thought I'd do a little 'splaining for this first set of 'Tweets'.



The idea is to answer a single question with a single sentence (ie. 140 characters or less): What are you doing?

It's fun getting glimpses into the day-to-day of people you know and keeps you clued in and connected to what's going on out there. Occasionally people will tweet links to interesting and/or cool things too. It's a good way to see what real people are thinking and talking about.


Still thinking it sounds lame and that it has no use whatsoever? I beg to differ. Strangely enough this is the most powerful networking tool I've come across and one of the easiest to use (a.k.a. STRESS-FREE!). It's easy to find people and follow them, to 'tweet' directly to them (and often get comments back), I can tweet the URL of my latest blog post and have people go look at it the instant I let them know (it helps to tease them with a title of course!) and if you have a large enough group following you it's a great way to get lots of instant feedback for questions you may have (eg. anyone know of any good cafes in Baltimore?) and, just as importantly, support (eg. 'the plumbing exploded' will likely result in tweets from 'you poor thing' to 'I know an excellent plumber in your area if you need a recommendation').

If you're a writer (like me) or an artist intending to put your creative babies out into the world at some point in the future, this is a very good way to get known ahead of time and engender support. By the time you put your project up for public consumption you'll have people waiting for it and will get almost-instant feedback too. Both are very important for writers/artists to survive. The key is to a) get involved (sign up) and b) GET INVOLVED! (tweet regularly). If nothing else, you will have made some new friends and/or keep in touch with your old ones - that can only be a good thing!

So here are my Tweets from today (well, yesterday now) July 16, 2008. The most recent is first:

• Og is recognizably humming Chitty Chitty Bang Bang... not bad for 17 months old.
• Heri-ro-ro! (Helicopter in Og-speak)
• My sister just spent 8 days at Club Med Bintan, Singapore. She lives in a different universe to me.
• I hate it when my file menus disappear off the screen! Why does it do that?
• Found an author I've been searching for on LJ - Melissa Marr. I like her writing and her tattoos both!
• Over 5 months later the Valentine's balloon is finally starting to sink.

If you want to be part of my Twitter Tribe, you can find me here. It's free to join and super-easy to use. Tweet you later!