You ever fancied yourself a blogger but failed to have the energy or time to post considerate or daft missives at regular intervals? Twitter could set your inner blogger free. While some folk call it microblogging or moblogging, I really like to think about Twitter simply as blogging for regular folks. Perhaps you are actually busy. Perhaps you do not have much to assert. Or perhaps you are just lazy.

No problem. This free service works by letting you broadcast a group SMS message to your friends’ mobile telephones from your own telephone, a rapid message or an Internet form at twitter.com. All of your notes are then stored and shown on your private profiling page on the site, which includes links to your friends’ Twitter pages, a thumbnail picture of your choosing, and a short bio. You can even send text updates immediately to your FaceBook or MySpace page. Just don’t forget to keep it short: posts are restricted to one hundred and forty characters, and the subject is, usually, “what are you doing?”. More frequently than not, it seems, Twitter’s 25,000,000 members (twice as many as it had merely six months back, according to Twitter business development director Biz Stone), are simply killing time.

Even presidential candidate John Edwards is on it, though he appears to be the sole one pondering more than lunch. As I type this, Caroline is mulling over some Girl Scout cookies, ian_hocking is “Waiting for Jessica to arrive so we will be able to eat!” and hlantz is “having a pleasant cup of Soft Starmint tea.” Exciting .

The gossip about Twitter escalated into a virtual roar last year in the South by Southwest multimedia festival in Austin, Tex, when the barebones service owned by Blogger founder Evan Williams, 34, was named the best blogging tool and attendees used it to meet up at parties.

Since that point, the fawning attention to the service has come full-circle as reviewers have started to realize how uninteresting most of the people’s lives actually are. ( As if YouTube’s studio of puppy and kitten videos had not already driven that point home. )

Nevertheless, Twitter has been the top term on blog search engine Technorati for the previous 12 months. Lots of folk would happily have Twitter muzzled, instead of endure the beeping alert for yet another new text. But I am gambling that Twitter will get a lot noisier before tweople move on to the following new thing. Why? Because Twitter targets the same crowd that digs FaceBook and, candidly, that site is getting off. We cyberjunkies need a new thrill, and what could be better than a service that mixes social networking, blogging and texting? Dozens of other corporations try to do a similar thing with services like VelvetPuffin and Google’s Dodgeball.

But only Twitter has worked out the easy way to make it easy. I know, it’s absolutely mad and shallow, but that is exactly why Twitter is on its way to turning into the next killer app.

And if you detest it, well, in the words of one Twit from San Francisco, “I’m so sick to death of Twitter-haters. If you do not like it, why waste your time writing, reading, or talking about it?

Well, last night’s Grammy awards showed a new feature of Twitter.  Seconds after Steven Colbert pulled an iPad from his jacket, it was tweeted and live on YouTube! It was interesting to see how it looked when someone captured the TV image on his iPhone and then sent it to YouTube and tweeted about it…This works? well, except the quality of the video is below standard…So can anyone tell me how I can get the TV feed on my iPhone so I can record it in real-time and share it with the world now?

There is a lot of controversy on the question whether it is ethically allowable to make money from Twitter. In the early days of the web the same question was asked on whether it was allowable to make money off websites. In the meantime this question has been answered: millions of people are making money either through advertising or affiliate marketing. Probably the same is true for Twitter. It should be no problem to make money using Twitter and today this is already happening in an increasingly high pace. In fact, many people feel that if you are in marketing and you are not on Twitter, you just don’t get it.

As you will find from Dick Raman’s book “Tweeteronix” there are many ways to make money using Twitter. Whether you’re an artist or running a business, there is much value in driving traffic to your website by tweeting interesting information and including a link. Especially when you have a large number of followers it be- comes quite easy to get people to go to your website and become customers. But more importantly there it is a unique opportunity to use Twitter to find out what people are saying about your brand or to poll the general opinion about a wide range of topics.

For the first time in history governments as well as businesses have a unique opportunity to tap into a low-cost resource and find out if they are on the right track. Some businesses have put together Twitter-teams that are following everything that is said about their brand. They have put an extension to their customer relationship management system in place that allows them to respond to signals in the market coming from Twitter and create an intimate bond with their customers. These companies have already seen the value of Twitter for their business and I predict that if companies don’t follow this example soon, they might not survive. In today’s world the motto for businesses is: “Use social media or die!” Just make sure that when you allow your employees to tweet at work, social networking does not become social not working.

Tweets are like the phone, they touch every aspect of business and companies should be prepared to allow interaction with Twitter at every level and in every department of their company. Twitter is not only useful to promote products and services, it also provides a method to benchmark your company against your competitors, increase the quality of customer support and create better customer intimacy.

For many businesses this must be a horrific scenario. They have always believed that they should funnel all information on the company through very well trained spokespeople. Just the idea that anyone in the company can now be talking to the customers looks like a nightmare scenario. Undoubtedly, internal issues will be brought to the public’s attention and this can hurt the reputation of the company in a great way. However, companies should realize that the worst thing people could say about the company is nothing. Companies should want to hear what the happy customers have to say as well as the criticism on the company itself its products or services.

Especially when companies can promote their corporate All-Star, they are in a position to win the hearts and minds of people and increase the strength of their brand. Sometimes the corporate All-Star is simply the CEO. There seems to be an enormous attraction in the general population to listen to what a CEO of a well-known company has to say. Where’s before the CEOs would say nothing so they cannot divulge confidential information, CEOs in today’s world should realize that there is enormous power in their person as a brand.

Remember one thing: at the other end of a tweet there’s always someone that doesn’t appreciate being hit with advertisements or sales links. They can unfollow and ignore you. Most people on Twitter are smart and educated and don’t appreciate sales pitches. Work on building as many relations as possible with your current followers, and then move on to the next batch of followers and do the same. Treat your Twitter friends as pals and not as clients. Provide true value in everything you do on Twitter.

I have seen a lot of people following thousands of tweople and I always asked myself how they manage to handle so many users. Now with the list function, users will have a new tool that will help them to manage Twitter in a simple manner.   They can create lists of tweople they really want to read tweets from, while their following can grow unlimitedly, so it can be used for marketing purposes.  In other words, the lists bridge the gap that existed between the ‘purists’ that want to use Twitter only for their personal enrichment and the ‘marketing’ folks that just want as large a following as possible to have the largest reach for their promotional tweets.

To get started with lists, there are a few basic things to keep in mind.  The first thing is to plan ahead for best results. First, make sure you share your lists outside of Twitter. Everyone is thinking about sharing his or her lists within Twitter, but don’t stop there. Share the links to your lists on your website or blog. Lists can be accessed via a web address like: http://twitter.com/user_name/list_name. To promote your list on your website, just add a link with this address. Don’t forget to promote your lists on FaceBook, in email signatures, and in your newsletters.  Secondly, give your lists a good name.  After all when you give your list a name this will become part of the URL, people will see this and should be able to remember this.   Naming your lists may not be as important as choosing your Twitter user name, but it is still important. You want the name to be enticing, but it should accurately describe what kind of list it is.  Finally, create lists with a target audience in mind. Think strategically, take a marketing approach and think of lists as a marketing tool. Ask yourself these questions: “What kind of information is my target user interested in?” and “How can I make it interesting enough for him to follow my list”.  For example, let’s say you are a realtor. You would like to attract potential homebuyers in the Boston area. Your target audience would be (first-time) homebuyers and people thinking of selling their house. You should be able to find several bloggers and home magazines on Twitter that tweet about home buying, loan types, the home buying process, mortgages and interest rates. Surely you can find several tweople who tweet about Boston neighborhood statistics or tweet links to articles and blogs on the subject.  Put all of these sources together in a list and you have created a valuable tool for people that could be your prospective customers. Now all you have to do is promote your list in every place you can think of and see the followers of your list (which are your prospects) grow.

Lists are public by default, but you can make them private, which makes sense if you are just using them to organize what tweets to read.  The lists you have created are linked from your profile. Other Twitter users can decide to subscribe to your lists. This means lists can be an important new discovery mechanism for great tweets and tweople.

When you follow a list, you can see it in the “Lists” section in the right-hand side of your Twitter home page. There are different ways to find lists to follow.  You can use Twitter under ‘People You Follow’ on the profile page of anyone on Twitter, and you can see all of the public lists they have created and all the lists they follow. You can also see the lists that person appears on. Checking out the lists that your close friends have created, follow, or appear on, is a good way to locate lists you might be interested in.  It is expected that many third party applications will come out with list functionality.  Listorious is a good example of such an app.  It maintains a rapidly growing directory of Twitter lists. You can search or browse through many lists by category and check out the most popular lists in different areas.

The Lists API has now been updated as well. This will allow developers to add support for lists into their Twitter apps. Business usage of Twitter Lists is one of the challenges that new Twitter users face in finding interesting users to follow. There are several third-party tools to help you decide who to follow, by allowing you to search their Bios and their tweets. Developers will be able to grasp the API and use its functionality to add the Twitter lists feature into their apps. The management of your lists is a manual activity and may take up quite a lot of your time.  So it is expected that many third party developers will come up with clever additions to their software to automate the creation and maintenance of Twitter lists.

All in all, the addition of lists to Twitter is a great idea.  As long as you make your lists public, everyone can enjoy the fruits of your labor. The fact that these lists can be made searchable on the Twitter site itself means more exposure for your own Twitter account. Alternately, you can keep the list private and just use it as a way to stay connected inter-office.  Make some clever lists and share them with others, ask them to follow your list and see your popularity grow. There is no better way to network than to have a lot of interested readers! In the end, lists can really help Twitter users enjoy their experience in the Twitterverse and also use it for their own business purposes. Who knows what they will come up with next!

Twitter recently announced a new feature on their website. This feature allows users to organize the people they find interesting on Twitter in so-called “lists”. The twitter list function shows up at the top of your account page providing easy access to create your own lists.  Users can create multiple lists for different purposes, a list of friends, artists or just a list of their favorites brands.

If you click on the list, it will only show tweets from the people you put in that the list. Maybe you were was expecting that this function will let you control which people can read my tweets, but that’s not the case. Twitter lists let you organize how you can more selectively read tweets posted by people on your list. You can select what list you want to read instead of reading your whole stream.

Twitter has chosen to keep the lists separate from your followers.  In other words, you do not have to follow someone to add him/her to a list that you create. You can also remove your name from any list you don’t want to be on. If someone adds you to a list you don’t want to be on, you can block that user and you automatically remove yourself from the list.

Lists can be public or private. If you choose them to be public you are sharing your list with the world, if you set it to private, only you can use it. Twitter lists can also be used to create widgets from a specific list allowing you to post them on your blog or social network site.  Basically, twitter lists are a new way to group and share people you find interesting. Currently users can’t exceed 20 lists with a maximum of 500 tweople.

Companies or brands can create multiple lists based on specific users with requested backgrounds or topics. The list feature is a powerful marketing tool for research and live search of people’s reactions to product releases, events or general feedback about anything. This was a prominent feature that a lot of people were asking for.

Considering that these twitter lists are linked from your personal account, there is a great possibility that users who are regular viewers of your activity will be introduced to new and exciting twitter accounts that you are following and feature within a list. You could help your friends follow funny or interesting Twitter users that they were previously unaware of!

In the past, users have recommended Twitter accounts to follow by tweeting the user name with the tag ‘#followfriday’ every Friday. Each week on this day the tag tops the list of Twitter Trending Topics. However, now with the invention of the list feature, this tag may become less popular as friends can simply look at your lists to discover new accounts worth following. If you need to see an example of a twitter list, the Twitter team that developed this feature has created a list showcasing all of their activity that can be seen at http://twitter.com/twitter/team. This is a great way for the people at Twitter to stay connected through this list and read each other’s status updates quickly, without sorting through hundreds of other feeds they are subscribed to. You can link your own job’s member accounts together in a list and share it on the company website.

You can even feature your Twitter lists on your own website or on your favorite social networking sites by utilizing the Twitter List Widget (http://twitter.com/goodies/widget_list). Simply fill out your information on the Twitter List Widget page and the site will produce the proper HTML code that you can embed on your own personal or business site to share your list.

Today Tweeteronix launches a book and an application on Twitter.  The combination creates a unique proposition for the market: all buyers of the book will get a free subscription to the Tweeteronix application.  Author Dick Raman wrote a brilliant book on the use of Twitter for Business and Pleasure.   The application is designed for businesses and bloggers that would let users automatically build up a substantial following in a number of accounts, while tweeting interesting messages on behalf of their business.

Dick Raman, a renowned Entrepreneur, Speaker and Author, clearly positions Twitter as the new way to stay in touch with what is happening in the world now. Twitter is the next generation web: the real-time stream of information, anyone can dip into and join the conversation on any given topic. At the same time the book explains clearly what businesses small and large can do with Twitter and how Bloggers can get more readers.

Erik Verhaar, Publisher said: “This is a very powerful book: it is a complete guide to Twitter that describes not only how Twitter works, but also the logic behind it, the context in which it can be used as well as the applications for businesses. The author manages to provide a level of depth, seldom seen in books of this kind. It offers the reader all the tools to get everything possible out of Twitter.”

The book also describes the Tweeteronix application. This application distinguishes itself from other Twitter applications by its sophisticated engine that is designed to automatically build up a substantial, but targeted following.   The application offers many user-defined settings that can create a meaningful group of followers for multiple Twitter accounts.  It allows the user to post predefined tweets that are relevant for his audience, so he can build a solid relationship with his followers.   Since everything is on autopilot, users would not have to spend much time doing this, which helps the busy executives to save time.  Tweeteronix provides a low-cost way to reach the point, where businesses can use the power of Twitter for marketing their business in a unique and meaningful manner.

You can find the application on http://Tweeteronix.com you can order the book there as well

I first heard about Twitter over two years ago, when I was perusing fitness blogs. Some of the fitness bloggers had taken to using Twitter in order to track their daily food intake, meal-by-meal. Although this was before Twitter had applications that allowed for better smartphone functionality, such as TwitterBerry and TweetDeck, which would have allowed them to tweet what they were eating immediately after a meal, it still seemed like a convenient tool. I gave it a shot, but never really got into it then. My Twitter quickly stagnated, and I never would have guessed that a little less than two years later, Twitter would become a pop culture sensation.

I can’t remember exactly how Twitter started becoming so popular. Something about Ashton Kutcher and Shaquille O’Neal having a Twitter, so I decided to sign back up. As soon as I signed in, I saw that I could follow so many more celebrities than just them, although the list only extended from “celebrities I kind of like” to “celebrities I don’t really even know.”

I followed, and then quickly unfollowed, Stephen Fry. As lovable as the man is, he Twitters too damn much. Twitter has been a bastion of (mostly useless) information as well. I learned from Cesar Milan (the Dog Whisperer) that dogs sweat through the pads of their feet, and I was one of the first to know that Gavin Newsom would be running for governor of California, as his very first announcement was through his own Twitter. I know when a Twittering baseball player feels like he has tendinitis, and when he feels like it’s just shoulder soreness, and I now know that the writers of the Office act a great deal like the fictional writers of 30 Rock.

I stopped Twittering about a month after I joined, because I realized that, even though I think it’s hilarious, no one really cares that my dog almost burst through the sliding glass door in her (successful) attempt to eat a fly. However Twitter is definitely still a feature in my daily “rotation” of the ten or so sites that I visit multiple times on a daily basis. However, I’m a fickle follower, and I find myself deleting 3-4 more Twitters from my follow list per week. And as tech savvy as I am, I still don’t quite get the re-tweet thing. What, @ replies weren’t good enough?

One lesser-known feature, in terms of how to use it, is the trending hash #. Used for games, protests, and just plain silly Internet themes, the trending hash is placed in front of a word or phrase to make it stand out when talking among people. That way, when searching trends, the hash mark makes a common phrase for a game stand out among ways it may be used in other tweets.

One popular Trend is called #blamedrewscancer. Twitter users #blamedrewscancer for things that go poorly, and BlameDrewsCancer,com records it, hoping for a company to sponsor each blame towards a cancer foundation.

Twitter is something that is here to stay. People devoted to other Social Networking sites will eventually come around and see that Twitter is a fantastic communication too. It’s ease of use, unique features and variety of people is a testament to it’s lasting power.

You can follow anyone, from ZombieCptPicard to MSNBC. GossipGirl updates you on that guilty pleasure show you watch, and your best friend complains about the homework they forgot until last minute.

In the age of communication, I highly recommend everyone starts Tweeting. Otherwise, you’re just out of the loop.

Twitter used to have the air of a geek service but that was before Oprah. Now, however, if you want people to recognize your true geekdom, you have to exercise a little more creativity. In that fix myself, I thought, “What’s the geekiest way to tweet?” The answer came to me immediately — do it from the Linux command line.

The Simple Way

The Twitter API is pretty simple, so you don’t really need to have any specialized client if all you want to do is submit your tweets. If you have curl installed, you have all you need; if you don’t, from Debian or Ubuntu you can just do apt-get install curl as root from the command line. Once you have curl, you can submit a tweet really easily. Just do curl -u “user:pw” -d “status=Your tweet here” http://www.twitter.com/statuses/update.xml replacing “user:pw” with your username and password and “Your tweet here” with your tweet. You’ll get a bunch of messy output, which, once you know you’ve got it working, you can route away by ending the command with: > /dev/null

Still too much typing?
Put it in a shell script. For example: #!/bin/bash curl -u “user:pw” -d “status=$1″ http://www.twitter.com/statuses/update.xml >/dev/null (again replacing “user:pw” with your username and password). Save the script as, for example, /usr/bin/tweet, make it executable by chmod 755 tweet and then all you need to do to send your tweet is: tweet “Your tweet here” That’s the simple way. However, if you need to access the fancier features of Twitter — and you probably will — you will either have to go to the web interface and give up your geek status, or resort to the fancy way.

The Fancy Way

If all of this looks too much like coding to you, there is already at least one good command-line Twitter client. It’s called twyt, and was written by Andrew Price. It’s much more full-featured than the example above; in addition to posting tweets, it will let you follow the public timelines, your friends’ tweets, direct messages and @tweets. You’ll have to have the Python programming language installed — most Linux distros already do — and you must install python-simplejson. When that’s done, you’ll be able to issue simple commands like: twyt tweet “Your tweet here” twyt friendstl That’s probably all you’ll need to get started; the manual included with twyt will explain more. Happy tweeting from the command line!

You always hear people talking about social networking sites like MySpace, Friendster and Facebook. Forget about those sites and check out Twitter! Everyone is all hot and bothered by the new internet craze called Twitter. It is on the lips of every CNN news anchor, Conan O’Brien talks about it on the Tonight Show on NBC, and even recently my own mother has started twittering.

Twitter is a great way to keep in touch with friends, family, co-workers and other people you who want to know what’s going on in your life when you want them to. You can send out tweets through your phone or computer and people can follow you through their phone or computer.

More than just a large way to “text the world” Twitter has become a way to reach a large amount of people in a very short span of time with a very short number of characters. It’s great for on the go and when there’s too much people to stay in touch with you can just twitter to let them know what’s been going on with you.

You can also send a twitpic, which lets you share pictures with your followers. For example, when you are on vacation, take a picture with your camera phone and upload it straight to twitpic from your phone to let your followers see what you’re doing at that very moment.

Try using the search engine and find your family and friends who may be on twitter. You might want to follow people as well and get their updates. You can reply directly to your friends twitter updates and they can do the same. You don’t have to worry about privacy because you can make your page private and only let your friends view your updates or you can make it public for everyone to view.

You can control who follows you also by accepting or denying peoples requests. If you don’t know anyone on twitter there is a “Suggested Users” page where you can find interesting people to follow.
A lot of celebrities are on twitter too. Try doing a name search to find your favorite celebrity and follow them to get their updates. You’ll find everyone and anyone on twitter.

Also try following your favorite television show or your favorite store you love to shop at. It’s a great way to find out when the store is having a sale or other great deals. I used the “invite by email” page on twitter and got all my family and friends to sign up and follow me and I’m following them too.

I know in my experience I have used Twitter in more than just a causal way. I have found that Twitter can be a useful funnel of people into your own blog or actual money making website.

The thing is that you have to have a good hook. You have to have a gimmick that no one else uses. For me, I have used a “joke a day” idea to keep people interested in my website. The jokes pertain to the topic of my website and I include a link to my website in each Twitter post.

This idea can be adapted in a number of ways for your website or business. If you have a humorous business you can go the “joke a day” route. Serious business men might not want their business promoted by whatever lame quips you have hired the temp to come up with.

You can also try a “fact of the day” but make sure to make it interesting and make sure it relates to the type of business you are trying to promote using Twitter. Once people are hooked on your “whatever it is of the day” then you can watch the ad dollars start rolling in.

It doesn’t take much time to set up a Twitter account or to come up with a bunch of jokes, or ideas, or facts of the day. All you need is 20 minutes on Google and you are all hooked up.
Who knows, once this Twitter craze dies down, your company might still be known as that one place where they give out the interesting facts, or silly puns.

I would image that once you have hooked your new clients in with Twitter, your fabulous customer service and dedication to a quality product will take over.

No matter what age you are, twitter is great, fun and easy to use.

As a user on Twitter there are a lot of features you might not be wholly familiar with. The following are Twitter features you will come across, if you follow a lot of different users. You might not completely understand these techniques when other people use them until you try using them yourself when you tweet! You can visit these links I’ve compiled that highlight these common Twitter methods that can make your tweeting experience much more rewarding.

URL Shorteners

Sometimes you want to tweet about a website or URL of an article you’ve just read and want to recommend to your Twitter community. However, hyperlinks are often longer than the 140 character limit imposed on your tweets. The solution is to use a tool called ‘URL-Shortener’. You can go to a number of sites that will shorten a URL for you, such as TinyURL , tr.im, p.ze and others to receive an abbreviated version of your URL that still brings you to the same website. Use the tinier version in your tweet without it using up all your 140 characters!! It also makes your tweet easier to read. More and more of these ‘URL Shorteners’ or ‘URL Cloakers’ are springing up. bit.ly is a very popular one. This shortens your URL automatically if you enable that, but more importantly it shows you how many times your short URL was clicked on.

Re-Tweet

In Twitter you will often see people use the term “RT” in their tweets. RT stands for ‘Re-Tweet’ meaning you have tweeted what somebody else already tweeted. Basically “retweet” just means quoting what someone else has already posted on twitter. Users often also ask you to retweet (RT) things in their own tweets if they want to spread the word about something very important to them. Read more about retweeting at http://wiki.answers.com

Hashtags

Another common phenomenon that you will encounter on Twitter, is the use of the “hashtag” or #. This little symbol allows the user to tag keywords within their tweet. Follow the user’s hashtags along with real time results for keywords that other Twitter users are tagging. You can read more about the use of hashtags here: Hashtags.org.
StockTwits is an excellent application based on Twitter for real-time updates on stock trading. Whatthetrend.com allows the users to see what is most popular on the twitter and why it is popular. It is a wiki so that anybody can add the information. Twitter-Atlas- allows users to view tweets on a world map. Twittelicious- Combines twitter and delicious.com. Twitpic- A way to share pictures on Twitter Twitterfeed- Offers to tweet the last posts published in a blog via the RSS feed.

Advanced usage

Twitter can be used in many ways. For example Twitter can be used as a marketing tool. You can find and add people within a geographic area or people interested in particular things using the search feature provided by Twitter. In that way you can track potential customers and market your product to the right people. In another way Twitter can be used as a real-time news agent. You can see what is hot in the world from the trending topics section at the twitter page. Many people now use automated tweeting softwares to update tweets. For example developers can create tweeting application from a blog posting automatically as it is created.

It is surprising that Twitter itself does not offer a way of controlling and measuring which keywords are being used in real time since they do mark trends of the most tweeted about terms. This might change on Twitter’s part in the future. These are just a small example of the type of methods you will see people using on Twitter that can make your own Twitter usere experience more fun.

Go out explore and find more useful techniques and enjoy your tweeting adventures!