Why Use Twitter?

What is Twitter anyway?  Twitter is a micro-blogging social network.  The question of “What are you doing?” says it all.  People post updates containing a maximum of a 140 characters to their twitter page which your “followers” can then read and see well, what you’re doing at that point in time.

So why use Twitter?  It seems like it would just consist of people “blogging” about what they are doing, which as any good bloggers knows no one likes to read about.  So what makes Twittering or Tweeting any different?  Well, Twitter is more than just micro-blogging it is essentially a platform (if you will) in which people can meet and find new people – where the social networking part comes into play.

Not only can you meet new people, but you can keep up-to-date with what your friends are doing all the time (assuming they update their Twitter religiously – which a lot of people do).

Aside from staying connected with your friends, Twitter is excellent for event planning with friends or large groups, it is also a great platform for bloggers/website owners to update people (their “followers”) with the latest pertaining to their site or blog.  Twitter is also becoming a hangout for well-known Internet Entrepreneurs such as Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, Robert Scoble of Scobleizer, Kevin Rose of Digg, Leo Laporte of TWiT, and many more.

A number of client-side applications have also been developed for updating Twitter allowing users to update their Twitter and read their friends without going to Twitter.com.  Clients such as Twhirl, Snitter, and Twitterific are the most popular choices.  Twitter can also be configured with Google Talk and other Instant Messenger clients.  In addition to the software clients on a computer Twitter can be updated via mobile devices such as Cell Phones.  The iPhone even has Twitter Applications which can be downloaded and installed onto the device itself.

Twitter is an excellent social networking / micro-blogging site which has so many different uses from keeping up with friends to finding out the latest news and updates for your favorite sites and/or applications to even finding help and making new connections with people like yourself.

I guess the question really should be, Why shouldn’t you use Twitter?

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