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Evan Williams and Biz Stone of Twitter Robyn Twomey for TIME ENLARGE + Print Reprints Email Twitter Linkedin Buzz up! (44) Facebook MORE... Add to my: del.icio.us Technorati reddit Google Bookmarks Mixx StumbleUpon Blog this on: TypePad LiveJournal Blogger MySpace The one thing you can say for certain about Twitter is that it makes a terrible first impression. You hear about this new service that lets you send 140-character updates to your "followers," and you think, Why does the world need this, exactly? It's not as if we were all sitting around four years ago scratching our heads and saying, "If only there were a technology that would allow me to send a message to my 50 friends, alerting them in real time about my choice of breakfast cereal." Related Audio Host Katherine Lanpher talks with TIME's Just Fox on stocks vs. bonds and Barbara Kiviat about the housing market's new movement Download | Subscribe Specials The World of Twitter Specials Top 10 Celebrity Twitter Feeds Specials 10 Ways Twitter Will Change American Business Stories The TIME 100: The Twitter Guys by Ashton Kutcher More Related The TIME 100: The Twitter Guys by Ashton Kutcher The TIME 100: The Twitter Guys by Ashton Kutcher The Future of Twitter I, too, was skeptical at first. I had met Evan Williams, Twitter's co-creator, a couple of times in the dotcom '90s when he was launching Blogger.com. Back then, what people worried about was the threat that blogging posed to our attention span, with telegraphic, two-paragraph blog posts replacing long-format articles and books. With Twitter, Williams w

"Injecting Twitter into that conversation fundamentally changed the rules of engagement. It added a second layer of discussion and brought a wider audience into what would have been a private exchange. And it gave the event an afterlife on the Web. Yes, it was built entirely out of 140-character messages, but the sum total of those tweets added up to something truly substantive, like a suspension bridge made of pebbles."

Twitter is one of the most popular micro blogging and social media site, which is growing at a rapid pace. A lot of individuals and organizations are using Twitter in order to enhance their sales and marketing. It is also effective in brand building. Twitter is a social media site where you can express your views and thoughts in 140 characters. You can also share links along with your thoughts. A lot of tools are available which makes the usage of Twitter more smooth. I have been trying a lot of tools and each day many new tools emerge, which are simply superb. I would like to share some important Twitter tools that I have found useful in managing Twitter accounts.

This is a great article about twitter. And I really like the idea that it is a LOT about what we can DO with twitter data that makes it so compelling (all those great apps out there). "Websites that once saw their traffic dominated by Google search queries are seeing a growing number of new visitors coming from "passed links" at social networks like Twitter and Facebook. This is what the naysayers fail to understand: it's just as easy to use Twitter to spread the word about a brilliant 10,000-word New Yorker article as it is to spread the word about your Lucky Charms habit. Put those three elements together - social networks, live searching and link-sharing - and you have a cocktail that poses what may amount to the most interesting alternative to Google's near monopoly in searching."

Let's face it, the Twitterverse is made up of individuals and brands. While the branded Twitter accounts are staffed by people, the persona of each Twitter account is either an individual or a company or a brand. For example, General Motors has a branded Twitter account, and they also have product branded Twitter accounts. Like you I receive dozens of new Twitter followers every day. When I plow through them, I usually make my decision to follow back (or not) in under 5 seconds.

Those who have panicked that their Twitter followers have dropped - don't be paranoid! The twitter spammers have again taken the axe. Twitter self corrects about every 90 days and you'll get used to it. The fact is that Twitter is for meaningful, authentic communication - albeit short and if you do that, it can be a fun, and useful part of your personal learning network. It is unique to you and how you want to do it! Remember that it is not about the followers although you'll have people direct message you that you can somehow buy 200 or even 500 followers a day -- like that will enrich your life! Come on -- twitter is great and it is not about how many people follow YOU anyway - if you get tied up in that too much then you're probably really there for just selfish reasons anyway. Enjoy and have fun!

"Because social-networking tools are forums for personalized, socially focused conversations, the communities that spring from these tools are person/people-centered. As Porter explained, this person/people-centeredness results in the value of participation being opaque for anyone who is not participating. To address this problem, we made sure that students who chose not to participate (because the value of participation is opaque for them) had access to our tweets by incorporating an RSS feed-like Twitter widget in our LMS. (See Figure 5.) Many widgets like these can be found online, although we should note that this particular widget has limitations. As seen in the example in Figure 5, the widget only displays Joni's posts, not the back-and-forth exchanges between her and members of her network. Students might incorrectly assume that the interaction is one-sided and less than dynamic. Besides keeping students apprised of the resources we shared via Twitter, however, this widget allowed them to vicariously discover Twitter's value. Some students later chose to join us in Twitter because they had a better understanding of what they were getting into because its value was less opaque. Ultimately, we found that Twitter helped us achieve our student-engagement objective, but we also quickly discovered that students' Twitter participation led to other notable instructional outcomes."

Enter Plurk; it's another Twitter clone which takes the Twitter concept and puts it on a timeline. The service has an odd, quirky feel to it; it's much more visual than Twitter, and it's fun to use. It uses colors to emphasize your 'moods', and it introduces the concept of karma, which should be familiar to Reddit users; the more you use the service, the more karma you get. In this case, karma even lets you unlock certain features, which almost feels like a mini game (if you like very boring mini games). Finally, just like Pownce, Plurk lets you divide your friends into "cliques", which is just a fancy word for groups.

Lovely down to earth look at twitter for beginners. I like this: Kindness, appreciation, and generosity are very meaningful on Twitter, just as in real life. Come to think of it, Twitter IS real life with real people who think and feel.

Be twittered has a gadget AND a moble gadget for twitter -- I'd love to hear how you like it. This means you may add a gadget to your homepage of igoogle to keep up w/ twitter on your start page. The mobile gadget allows you to put the app on your cell phone to track twitter. This is from 32 hours.

Mobile app and iGoogle gadget.

There's a lot of noise on Twitter. People use a variety of ways to filter through that noise, from following specific lists, finding like-minded people through third party sites, or using a variety of services and websites to find the information that matters to them on Twitter. Another interesting way to filter through what is being said on Twitter, and better yet, analyse it, is to visualize it [...]

Would you like to talk to your Twitter friends or set up a spontaneous conference call? Normally you'd have to agree to hook up over Skype or something else. But soon you could be making calls via Twitter. After signing in with your Twitter name and password you select how the call will be carried, either via browser, SIP ID or number/Mobile Phone. You then plug in your friend's Twitter name and generate a "Phweet" which is a unique shortURL for sharing the call with one or more people.

A Phweet is a shortURL that makes it easy to conduct voice conversations and conference calls between Twitter friends. You don't need to create a new account to use Phweet. Simply sign in with your Twitter username and password. thanks to Beth Kanter

Twitter Moms - groups of twitter lovers with a commonality in being mothers. There are all sorts of groups - from crafting to technology, business to just being moms. Joining up is like joining a Ning network, there are forums, badges, photos, events, personal pages, and subgroups under the Twitter Moms flagship.

Learn How to Use Twitter for Marketing without LOOKING Like an Annoying Marketer. Never Ever.

4 ways to Make Money with Twitter featuring money making sites like Magpie,Sponsored Tweets,TweetROI and TwittAd. This site helps you make money out of your Twitter account in different ways.

This Twitterfreak group member is promoting his own links, FYI. Most of the links in his public Diigo account are to this site. If people continue to do this, they'll be banned from this group.

Facebook Pages are becoming a lot more like Twitter in terms of the ways marketers can use them to reach and engage people inside Facebook. Twitter has proven that the "status update subscription + news feed" conversation model works well for a variety of marketers - from large brands to self promoters like bloggers, consultants, and real estate agents.

"In a recent conversation, I was asked what I thought about twitter as a learning tool. Over the course of the past few years I've moved from saying "I don't get it" - to feeling like it's a good addition to my Learning Tool Set. But I also think that there's a lot more help now around how to make effective use of Twitter as a learning tool. I thought it would be worthwhile to pull together these resources."

Diving into a rich and overwhelming social network like Twitter can be difficult. I know of many teachers and academic-minded people who are still unsure about the merits of the tool or are simply unsure where to start. The following 10 (+1 bonus!) beginner's guides to Twitter each do a tremendous job at informing without confusing.