What is Twitter? - Part Two

In the last post, we saw 5 points of Major Differences of Twitter with other networks:
1: No Scraps/Messages/Mails. Its Tweets.
2: 140 Characters!
3: No Friendship. Its Following.
4: ReTweet!
5: Free, Open & Live!
In case, you have missed that one, you can have a look at them by clicking on following link...

& now here continues the list...

Difference No. 6: Twitter Lists
We can create a grouping of persons on twitter.
It’s called List.
Facebook & Orkut give Group feature.
But there, I can add someone in a Group only if he's my friend on Orkut/Facebook.
It’s not so with the Lists on Twitter.
You can include any person on Twitter regardless of fact whether you follow him or not.
Advantage is that we can follow bunch of people with same interest with 1 single click
instead of finding & following them individually.
E.g. If
I can get all the updates from that group in 1 place.

Difference No. 7: Twitter on Mobile
One can get tweets of persons he/she follows on his/her mobile, that too, for free!
We can even send tweets by SMS, but that’s chargeable(at Re.1/message in India).
In India, 'Twitter on mobile' service is available for Airtel customers only.
It's particularly useful, when we follow someone who tweets News or funny jokes.

Difference No. 8: @ Replies & Direct Messages (DMs)
As we know, Twitter is famous for openness.
Any tweet I post is meant for whole world or at least for everyone who follows me.
But what if I want to tell something to someone specific
or I want to reply to someone?
I do it with something called as @reply.
E.g. If I want to tell ShahRukh that 'I liked your film K3G',
I go to Twitter & say:
@iamsrk i liked ur film k3g
& click update.
Though others can see what I said to ShahRukh,
ShahrRukh understands that it’s meant for him.
Now he might reply:
@adivasai thanx.
:-)
Then what if I really want to send a private tweet to someone,
which should not bee seen by others?
I send him/her a direct message on Twitter.
When I click on 'direct messages' on Twitter,
I get all the DMs at 1 place.

Difference No. 9: Hashtags
Hashtag declares topic/subject of a tweet.
Its used to create a group of tweets with similar subject.
Its writen as # sign followed by any word without any space/other sign in between.
E.g. When i tweet:
My blog http://greenmagnet.blogstot.com is a #green blog.
This tweet declares I am saying something about 'green' or environmental subject.
When someone searches for #green, this above mentioned tweet will appear in search results.
One can use any word as a hashtag. There can be any no. of hashtags in a single tweet. No limits.
Like if I tweet:
Today #Maharashtra CM is coming 2 #Vasai
this tweet declares it can be sorted under both, #Maharashtra & #Vasai.

10. Opportunity to meet Great People
Twitter gives us opportunity to meet many successful/great/powerful people.
It allows us to listen their thoughts about something & their ideas.
Sometimes, we may have an oppotunity to get in touch with them personally.
Now, great, powerful, etc are subjective words. It may change from person to person.
You may be interested in following news channels, filmstars, authors, politicians, corporate personalities, companies, etc.
Companies like Tata Docomo use Twitter to stay conncted with & hear to their customer base & to popularize new schemes.
Many great people are coming to Twitter...
No. 1 of Most Important People on the Web, Former Director of Apple & Google CEO Eric Schmidt joined Twitter on 6th Dec 2009.
World's Richest Person, Founder of Microsoft & Now a full time Philonthropist, Bill Gates came to twitter on 19th Jan 2010.
& yesterday His Holiness Dalai Lama joined the Twitter!

Some of the examples of other powerful people on Twitter includes:
Music:
Jennifer Lopez http://twitter.com/jlo

Authors:

News/Media:
Wall Street Journal http://twitter.com/wsj

Companies:

Politicians:
Barack Obama(President, USA)

Arnold Schwarzenegger(former Hollywood star & Now Governor of California, USA)

Al Gore(Former Vice President, USA & Environmentalist)

Shashi Tharoor(Former UN Under Secretary General, Now, Minister of States, External Affairs, India)

And these are just examples!
Most of the Twitter accounts given above are Official/Verified by Twitter,
so no need to worry about fake accounts.

One can get the neatly sorted official List of Verified Accounts from here...


This list doesn't end here...
Remaining few in next posts...

C ya.


regards,

This entry was written by aDi and posted on 3:12 AM and filed under Bookmark the permalink . Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post . Post a comment ( in a new window )  

What is Twitter?

What is Twitter?

Twitter. I bet almost all of you have heard this word.
Many of you might be already knowing something about it.
There might be some people who actually have an account on Twitter.com
but normally don't visit it(generally with an excuse of "No time'!).
Yet, in my friendlist, there are few who use Twitter regularly.

I thought this excellent tool should reach to more & more of my friends
& so, started this blog...
So, What exactly this Twitter is?

It's a free social networking website like Orkut or Facebook.
Like other sites, here too you can find & meet people, talk with them, etc etc.
So, what is the difference?
There is a whole lot of difference.
But for a start, some basic differences are...

Difference No. 1: No Scraps/Messages/Mails. Its Tweets.
The main purpose of this site is updating status.
You go to Twitter.com & on the top you see a text box.
You write something in the box & say update. That's all.
This message, post or status update is called a 'Tweet'.
One of the important features of Twitter is its openness.
You can see tweets of others, even if you don't have account on it.
you can start reading my tweets without logging in.

Difference No. 2: 140 Characters!
You can write anything in the above mentioned box...
A tweet is normally an answer to a simple question:
"Wassup?" or "What are you doing?" or "What's Happening?"
But it's not compulsory... you can write anything...
story, joke, sms, poem, link, news, advice, anything.
Only one condition... 140 CHARACTERS!
ONLY 140?????
Yesss! You have to write it all in just 140 characters.
NOT 140 words, but 140 CHARACTERS!
Space, Enter, Commas & other signs. Everything is counted in Characters.
This is superb for a less talking person.
But what if I am a talkative person & want to write more than that?
Simple! Write 2 or more tweets, there is no limit! :-)

Difference No. 3: No Friendship. Its Following.
You visit someone's profile page on Twitter,
& you think, "Yes, my thoughts are similar to him",
or you vist SRK's profile & exclaim "Oh My Goodness! This is Shah Rukh Khan!!!"
or you visit BBC's profile & say "This one will give me latest & breaking news"
or you visit Obama's profile & say, "I really want to listen what he says".
Then, you don't send friendship request & keep waiting for acceptance.
You just click a button "Follow" & that's all! You start following him/her/it.
What does 'following someone' mean?
It means you don't have to visit the profile to know what someone says.
You get all the tweets by that person right in you twitter page.
You can follow anyone. Anyone can follow you.
There's one more hidden advantage.
Suppose, you want to wish "Happy Diwali" to all of your friends.
Now, you don't have to go to profile of each friend & post a scrap/meesgae: "Happy Diwali"
You just tweet 'Happy Diwali' & this tweet automatically reaches to everyone who follows you.
So simple! Right?

Difference No. 4: ReTweet!
You read some tweet & find interesting.
Then you think, "Oh, I would like to share this with my friends(i.e. Followers)"
In that case, you just click on ReTweet Button under that particular tweet
& that's all! It's shared(i.e. Re-Tweeted) with your followers!

Difference No. 5: Free, Open & Live!
Twitter is a "open to all" website.
Whether or not you have an account on twitter
you can search & read tweets of others.
You can search for "Windows XP"
& read the tweets which are recently posted worldwide having words "Windows XP".
How fast is Twitter? 'Recently' means 'tweets before 30 Seconds'.
One more open feature is Trending Topics.
If you goto http://twitter.com, even before signing in,
you can see 3 rows of Trending Topics:
showing Popular Topics Right Now, Popular Topics Today
& Popular Topics This Week.
Its very interesting to see what people are talking about
right now, today or for last week.
(Haiti Earthquake & iPad are among the hot topics for last week.)





There are literally 100s of points that will attract you to twitter.
But these are just basics.
Others next time...

C ya.

regards,

This entry was written by aDi and posted on 3:08 AM and filed under Bookmark the permalink . Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post . Post a comment ( in a new window )  
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
top

This Blog is Listed On:

Visit blogadda.com to discover Indian blogs
© Twit Twit Twoggler! - Web 2.0 Blogger Template Dark by Jack Book and Dezinerfolio