So you’ve heard about this new Twitter thing and find yourself asking one very pertinent question, “What the hell is all this fuss about?. Do you remember when voicemail first reared its ugly head in your working/academic environment? Comments such as, “I’m never using that, I refuse to speak to a machine, I want to speak to a real person”. You have subsequently become a slave to the iPhone ‘visual voicemail’ service. A technology so perfectly refined and delivered, it makes you wonder how you ever lived without it. Again, do you remember the birth of e-mail? “No chance! No way am I ever sending my confidential documentation into ‘cyber-space’, have my PA print them out and Ill call people back personally!” Once again, the dissonance and inertia soon became acceptance. The acceptance turned to familiarity and ultimately total dependence. Do you see a pattern developing here at all?

In more recent times, attention has been turned to the social networking ogre that is Facebook. If you can remember the first time you heard about it, you were probably completely indifferent to it. This type of thing is for losers with no friends that exist in the real world! does this ring any bells? Well now, our attention has been turned to the latest craze in town, Twitter. Its everywhere, its on the news, its on the television and all your mates are talking about it. Rock stars, politicians, big business, small business, aunties, uncles and grandparents are all deciding to either investigate this latest craze and learn more about it or quickly decide its a pile of nonsense.

Before we go any further, for those of you who havent been keeping up to speed with the Waracle blog and those of you who arent familiar with Twitter, here is a basic definition: Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. According to Chris Brown, there are three key tips to remember when using Twitter:

1.)Dont be scared.
2.)Be pleasant, be fair and be nice.
3.)Brand yourself!

Dont be scared to use peripheral Twitter applications such as Twhirl, Tweetdeck and TweetLater. Twhirl allegedly makes it easier to work whilst refreshing your every status update. Having just downloaded and installed this delightful little application, I would probably argue that this is definitely not the case. The software works as a client that sits in your system tray and updates you in real time as new updates are posted. Its lightweight and relatively easy to use, but if anything it actually brings you further into the abyss that is Twitter (is that the Twabyss then?), hence I find it highly unlikely that this will save you time. Tweetdeck is neat as it allows you to segment all of your Twitter friends into different categories. The main problem with Twitter is that once you go beyond about 30 friends, it becomes almost impossible to keep up with everything that is going on and only certain posts will be of interest to you at any given time. Tweetdeck will let you keep an eye on the Tweets that are relevant to you, without having to sift through a tonne of stuff that isnt. TweetLater simply allows you to set specific dates and times in the future for your updates to be posted. I havent down loaded this yet as I dont really see a need at this stage.

Be pleasant, be fair, and be nice! Please remember that much like any blog or web based publication, once its been posted, its going to be suspended somewhere in the cyber-ether for all eternity. I would strongly suggest that late-night drunken status updates are definitely not the way forward. If you want to get plastered and vent your frustrations upon a previous employer, just keep in mind that the same sentiment could end up plastered across the local newspaper pages.

Brand yourself! Try using the same picture and username that you have used on other forms of social media to build your own personal online brand. This will allow your friends and followers to recognise you more quickly and keep you up to speed with whats going on in the world of you. Consider carefully the name, photo and profile set-up that you create. Is it for business, personal use or both? If you feel you have enough information to get up to speed, go to https://twitter.com/ and get started straight away. For those interested, my username is: MRomilly.

Happy Tweeting!

M x