Twitter Me This: Will You Go Truffle Hunting in the Forest Today?

You don't Twitter? You think it is nonsense? At first glance it looked like nonsense to me too. I was persuaded by people like Darren Rowse and Chris Brogan to look at the value of Twitter a second time. Now I see it as akin to truffle hunting and a form of blogging. I've developed an instinct for finding treasure and maybe I can persuade you to take a pig to the forest and start foraging and my Twitter name is DefogMyBlog.

I think Twitter is a wonderful program and it can be as fun and as serious as you want and you can vary your twittering according to your mood. Twitter constantly updates and your tweets get pushed back and fresh tweets surface. By the way a tweet can only be 140 characters long. Hence it is referred to as micro-blogging. Here is a snapshot of a moment, chosen at random, from yesterday afternoon's timeline.
























Well Bob Hankin cannot decide if joining facebook is a high or low point in his life and the Canadians are poohpoohing Bernie Dodge's pain. If I go to his Twitter page and have a look I find Bernie's latest tweets.




We now get a feel for what he is about and that he is frozen with the cold. If we look to the right we can see that he has 232 followers and he follows 79 people. More importantly we see he has a website or blog and we can immediately access to find the One Trick Pony which reveals more about him.

So in my opinion this person would be interesting to follow and you do this by clicking the button under his photograph and next time you log in then his updates will also appear in your timeline. You click on the little icons for those he is following and find some more people of interest to you, find their blogs, and leave a comment if you feel inspired. Have you read my post on comments yet?

You can keep up with Twitter using your mobile phone and you can post to it via mobile too. It is possible to save yourself from all the typing by using Spinvox. See my post on it here.

If you want to reply to an individual post then simply put @their_twitter_name at the beginning of your post. To include a long url in a post it is best to go to Tiny Url first or otherwise you may use up too many of the allotted 140 characters with it.

All tweets get picked up on Google. You can have a private twittering circle if you wish.

People use Twitter in various ways. Sometimes they just say goodnight and other times they use it to flag up over time that they are writing a book or their company is having a big launch or conference. The accepted etiquette is that you are low key and not like a promoter on a radio or television advertisement. Subtle is how you need to be.

I will look at other features of Twitter at a later date. In the meantime it would be good to get your comments or queries. Are you going to the forest with a pig today?

18th December I've just read this bad news about T Mobile and Twitter Who is Jon Ray?

Comments

[Chris Brogan...]

I think the notion of truffle hunting describes the information response of Twitter very well. Excellent work!

[James Whatley]

Nice post.

I'd be interested to read your thoughts/opinions on Jaiku and how it sits within the micro-blogosphere...

[Niamh Kiernan]

@James WhatleyI have not explored jaiku at all and feel I should do. Twitter was the one I heard of first and I liked it so much that I did not look else where.

[James Whatley]

@Niamh - You can find me on both Jaiku and Twitter under the username 'whatleydude'.

If you'd like to get into Jaiku, drop me an email and I'll send you an invite.

It is as similar to Twitter as it is different.

Less disruptive + Presence.

I prefer it.
But they are chalk and cheese to me.