Have you discovered Twitter yet? If not, you may want to just head on over to see what all the fuss is about. What folks do on Twitter is considered “microblogging” – short posts of 140 characters or less. The question that Twitter asks when you set up an account and every time you visit is “What are you doing?” Far from simply being a navel-gazing status report (although some posts read that way), Twitter is quickly becoming a real-time conversation between colleagues, friends, and even strangers. The professionals who add value on Twitter succinctly point their “followers” to relevant and interesting information.
Although I enjoy the Tweets (the “official” term for Twitter updates) of several of the people whose feeds I follow (err… all 16 of them…), the person I follow that I think uses the platform the very best is Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang). He uses a great mixture of providing helpful and relevant content, championing others, networking, asking questions to generate conversations, providing rundowns of events he’s attending, and laughing about life. I also want to point to Cyd Tetro (@cydtetro) as an example of someone who brilliantly showcases the business use of Twitter. Cydni and I went to High School together, but I only recently ran across her in cyberspace.
Warning: It takes some time to get the hang of Twitter, but once you’ve gotten your feet wet, you’re in danger of getting hooked.
As for my Twitter feed? Well, I can’t promise that I do anything brilliantly on Twitter, but I can tell you that if I want to share something I’ve come across, I’ll often not take the time to write up an article or blog post, but I will Tweet about it. To whoever is listening! @sarahurd
