Thursday, April 02, 2009

Las Vegas Twitters

Have you discovered Twitter? Good grief, it's addicting and frustrating, all at the same time! It's the new micro-blogging phenomenon that kept me up late last night figuring it out.

Here's the idea. You create an account and then search by whatever trips your trigger--Las Vegas, politics, gossip, pets, whatever. Other micro-bloggers (twitterers?) who match your keywords will appear. The big names are in on this--you'll find CNN, The New York Times, etc. Once you find a twitteree (I know I'm slaughtering the Twitter-ese here, but I'm still learning) you click on the "Follow" button under that person's name. Now when you go to your home page, you see all of the bloglettes you are following in one continuous list.

Why Twitter? It's a quick way to get updates on a huge variety of topics, for one. If you are promoting anything, Twitter allows you to broadcast to large numbers of people simultaneously after you've become twitter-rich with followers. If you have a blog, Twitter's gadgets enable you to create your own little sidebar news-feed with your Twitter posts. Twitter subscribers can also opt for updates on their mobile devices, with the Twitter-limited posts of 140 characters arriving via text message.

The only problem, as far as I can see, is that it's habit-forming and has a bit of a learning curve. Twitter-addiction is next. With Twitteranon following soon after, I'm sure.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello! I have your Blog in my favorites since last year. I live in Chicago and Vegas....so I like to know what's going on. I just joined Twitter a few days ago. I do love it. I have done Linked In, MySpace, Facebook but Twitter rocks. You can follow who you want and don't need to "friend" them like facebook. You can focus on other people who are like you and for me, are into fashion, blogging, jewelry. Twitter teaches you to be succint. (Unlike I am here)hmmmm with only 140 characters. So the messages are little bursts of info or energy or "tweets". Twitter, believe it or not seems the most professional and career-driven network. Facebook has a lot of silly people playing games, doing live chat, sending annoying apps., inviting to groups and clubs. Twitter is just hip and cool. My Blog activity has picked up and web site, etc. in just a couple days. It's great!

TH Meeks said...

I'm glad to hear I'm not alone in my view on Twitter--I agree, it's terrific! It took me a while to get the hang of it, but once I did... then it took me a while to stop tweeting. And I so agree with you about Facebook! I've set up a page but haven't done much with it yet--except set it up to publish a feed from Twitter.