what is twitter and why should you care
an unfathomable number of people around the world are hooked on a new(ish) service called twitter, and an equally unfathomable number still have no idea what it is. twitter is . . . a bit hard to explain. one way to think of twitter is as a blog hosting website. however, there is one twist : each entry (called a "tweet") may be no longer than 140 characters. and two unique features, 1) you can send in your blog updates by sending a text message (SMS) to twitter, and 2) your friends can sign up to receive your blog updates on their phones.
to get a better idea what i'm talking about, check out the twitter feed for my crazy husband, or an important person like barack obama. or, check out a few of the many twitter visualizations. twittervision shows some very small percentage of all the tweets received, and where they are coming from. it's best to look at this at an hour of the day when asia is asleep. i also like twistori which shows all incoming tweets containing certain keywords like "wish".
tweets started out in plain text, but it didn't take long for folks to think . . . gosh . .. i'd love to include a snapshot with my random thought of the day . . .and hence was born twitpic. and, of course, there are lots of handy applications to send photo-enabled twitters from your cellphone. i like twitterlator.
how you might use twitter depends on who you are. if you are . . .
- incapable of sending an SMS, or don't know what that is :
forget it, stay away. - capable of sending an SMS, but too lazy to setup a blog
twitter's a great way to join the nation's new favorite pastime - generating as much useless information as quickly as possible. - a non-technical blogger
twitter is a great companion to a traditional blog. if you're blogging using a standard blogging technology (wordpress, blogger, etc.) then you can easily add your twitter micro-blog as a sidebar to your regular blog. it's easy, it's fun, and it keeps your blog "fresh" with little effort on your part. - a geek
if you have any geeky tendencies, you'll likely rapidly develop a love/hate relationship with twitter. love the platform, hate the implementation. at the very least, you'll capture your tweets and display them (sensibly!) as part of your blog. or, hell, you might write an entire surf conditions report website that uses twitter as its underlying technology.
- cailin's blog
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Yay, I can now see bigger
Yay, I can now see bigger twitter photos! :)
oops, sorry, i never saw
oops, sorry, i never saw your october 13th comment. the single, clickable photo today was actually an accident. ; )
but, i'd been meaning to actually make them all clickable someday soon - done now! i'm afraid that you'll typically find it to be a disappointing experience though. typically, i take those pictures on my phone, and the full resolution image really isn't all that much better than the thumbnail.
my big beef with twitter is
my big beef with twitter is only that I can't click on the photos in your posts to make them bigger!
I thought twitter was a
I thought twitter was a moderately neat idea but something that i wouldn't usually bother with. That is, until I realized that one could update with photos taken on one's phone! Then I thought it was awesome! Unfortunately I have neither a blog nor a phone that will take pictures, so I have to be content reading your twitter posts and not actually having an account of my own. :)
though i have not much
though i have not much interesting to say, i took john's advice and made a twitter account and happily post my unimportants. it's quite fun actually. i made the decision after looking at one of john's twits about a peanut that looked like a cashew.
edith... if you ever get an account i will let you into my secret life. twitter.com/wfredrickson. then you can get a twitter thing for your ipod touch and wish you had a camera.
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