iTweet. Do you?

It is easy to say because you have a Facebook account, Yahoo! account, a MySpace page, the last thing you need right now is Twitter; you don’t want an extra account with another password – not again! Well, sorry to burst your bubble but as far as information is concerned, Twitter is possibly the most useful social networking tool out there.
As much as Facebook allows you to poke whoever you want, and Yahoo! lets you chat whenever you like with your Yahoo! buddies, twitter is your best bet for information on a specific topic or a field you’re interested in.
Twitter allows you enter only 140 characters per post. Your post is referred to as a tweet. People following you can see your tweets the same way you see those of those you follow.
Even thought the most basic concept behind twitter is “what are you doing”, it goes way beyond that! Following CNN for example doesn’t necessarily tell you what CNN is doing. What you see instead is a news update from CNN. This is when twitter gets informative.

Interact with twitter.
Twitter brings you closer to people that have similar interests as you. If for example, you are into photography and you need some questions answered about photography, all you have to do is follow someone in photography yourself and ask them questions.
Here are some basic tips on interacting with twitter:
@Mentions: inserting an ‘@’ in front of someone’s twitter username e.g. @CNN notifies them that you have mentioned them in a tweet. You can use this to let your friends know about your new tweet or someone else’s tweet.
Direct Messages: inserting a ‘D’ in front of the username instead, lets you send a direct message to them. This way, the tweet is not visible to anybody else but the person the direct message was sent to.
Retweets: a retweet is simply you re-tweeting what someone else already tweeted. This usually happens if you have friends or family members that can benefit from the information and you are unsure if they are following the person who tweeted. An ‘RT’ in front of the twitter username does the trick.
Hash-tags: these tags only allow you to include whatever you’re talking about in the trending topics. These topics allow users find information about a topic easily by using the twitter search engine. All you have to do is place a ‘#’ in front of the topic e.g. #Windows 7

Now that you know the basics of twitter, it shouldn’t be too difficult for you to start tweeting. While you’re at it, follow me: @aIRplaYtv

Please do realize that comments are absolutely welcome. You can add whatever you think is missing that I left out and you can also criticize twitter – if you can. 🙂