How and Why to Twitter

There are almost as many Twitter guides out in the blogosphere as there are people on twitter (tweeps), but most vary to some degree on the best or proper use of the site. Since there are many varying opinions and posts, I'll throw my two cents in and hope that you'll get something out of it.

Getting Started
The How to part is mostly mechanics and is more straightforward than the Why, so I'll start there. To sign up, you just go to www.twitter.com and choose a username and password. Next you need to write a short profile description (nothing fancy) and upload a photo for your profile. I personally will not follow anyone who doesn't do these basic things. Then you are ready to go, but to do what? This is where I sat and looked at the screen and wound up leaving this site for almost a year before giving it another shot. This is part one of why I wanted to write this post. I had no idea what to do , how to do it, or what the purpose was (the why). So here's what you do. First figure out the layout of the page. In the center you've got the "what are you doing" box (where you type whatever you want to say, your "tweet") followed by your "feed" or "stream" below, which is a list of what others are saying. You won't see anything at first, because the Home section (the default screen) shows only the "tweets" of the people you are "following". "Following" is just what it sounds like, you follow what other people are tweeting about, in chronological order down your screen. Now, who to follow and how(that could almost be a tongue-twister!)

Finding people to follow
There are some great tools to find people to follow, but you won't find most of them on the Twitter pages. Try Twellow for a list of tweeps by interest category, go to Twitter Grader and check out the "Twitter Elite" to find who the most popular people on Twitter are (they have lots of followers that you can look through to find more), or use the "find people" feature on Twitter to search by username, first or last name. Follow @MrTweet, a service that will find people with similar interests for you. Look at people's profile and what they tweet about to see if they would be interesting to you. Here are some people I follow as some examples to get you started(usernames are @somebody): @Scobelizer, @Pistachio, @brooksbayne, @chrisbrogan, and @PRsarahevans. This is just a small sampling of quality people you can follow who have a lot of followers, have a lot to say, and are engaging and will either follow you back or at least respond to you. I like to follow a variety of people: political views, random quotes, tech talk, random thoughts, etc. You can choose as few or as many people and streams of thought as you like.

The Rest of the Home Page
At the top right is your information: how many people you follow, how many people follow you, and how many times you've posted a tweet. Below that is the default Home button, which we've discussed, followed by @Replies and Direct Messages. @Replies are tweets that you have directed towards a particular person, but that everyone can see. You would type the username first, eg.@petersonwally, and then the message you want to tell them. This is the way to engage in conversations with people, rather than just watching what people are saying or posting to a mass audience. This section will record the @replies you send and the ones you receive separately. Direct Messages are messages you send someone that only they can see, that don't show up in either person's stream of tweets. Below DM's is Favorites. You can tag any tweet you see and want to reference later as a "favorite". Next is Everyone, which changes the view of your stream from tweets of the people you follow to the tweets of everyone on twitter. I rarely use this. Below Everyone is Following, with thumbnail pics of some of the people you are following and links to view everyone you are following and to add new people to follow. Finally there is Device Updates, which enables updates to your cell phone from anyone you choose via sms or email.

Search
There is a search feature at the bottom of the main page which lets you search for people or topics on twitter. Many tweets are grouped by subjects for easy searching or following of a conversation. This is done with hashtags, such as #conversation. Hashtags are used quite a bit and are very useful in grouping conversations between lots of tweeps. You can also search to see if anyone has mentioned a keyword, such as your name, company name, something you promote, or something you are interested in.

Website vs Desktop apps or Web apps
There are many different ways to view and track Twitter other than the actual website, and that list is growing rapidly. Right now I am using a desktop Twitter client called Tweetdeck that I really like. There is also Twhirl, Twinkle, the web-app Peoplebrowsr, and many others. You can find many web 2.0 tools like the ones listed here at Go2Web2.0, a very helpful site for finding cool new internet tools and toys that was developed by @Orli. Tweetdeck, Like many other Twitter apps, offers many views at once. You can have up to 5 columns showing at once, like everyone you're following, groups of people you've set up, conversation topics you're following, etc. There are several other really cool tools built in, but I won't explain it all in this post.

I've covered how to sign up, get started, find people to follow, use the website, and find different tools to use with Twitter. The next question is Why do you want to be on Twitter?

The Why
Why would you want to be on Twitter? This is the second reason I'm writing this post. How many of you who are already tweeting have fielded the questions "what is it?", "what do you do with it?", or the statement "I don't see the point" ? I have tried to reply to all of these when trying to explain Twitter to someone, and I usually wind up saying something like "it sounds stupid when I try to describe it, but once you try it you'll understand", which is a really stupid thing to say and doesn't help much. I had the same questions and apprehensions about the site when I first tried it, as I stated before. In addition to not knowing what to do, I didn't know why I would want to do it. When I made my way back on to Twitter after some nudging from a friend, I still didn't "get it", but I thought I would try it out and see what happened. Now, of course, I'm addicted. Here is a list of some reasons to use Twitter.

Meet People
One of the reasons any social media sites have been successful is the social aspect of them, finding old friends, communicating with long-distance friends in a more real-time way than IM and in more of a group setting, and finding new friends. This is pretty obvious, and is also part of the reason I use it, in a focused kind of way.

Learn Things
There are a lot of experts in different areas on Twitter, and they have interesting things to say, or links to new information about whatever it is that they do or are interested in. You can also follow companies or websites that are on Twitter. For instance, I follow @mashable , and I get updates to the newest posts on the site in the same place that I get info on what people I'm interested in are doing right now. There are news organizations tweeting, individual reporters, and just individuals reporting things because they happen to be there. Recent examples of events being tweeted as they happen are the airplane landing in the Hudson, the attacks in Mumbai, and another plane crash which a twitter user was on and was giving updates in almost real time as to what was happening. You can get a wide variety of information in one place while communicating with people involved with what's going on.

Network and Promote
In the same way that you can use it to make casual friends, you can also use it to make business acquaintances or promote your business, product, website, blog, etc. There is a great post on using twitter as a tool by a master of Twitter networking, @guykawasaki. If you acquire a large following, you have a large captive audience for anything you want to say or promote. The key is to be a personable tweeter, though, and not a promotion machine. People are more likely to listen to you if they like you.

Communicate with Colleagues or Groups
Collaborate, communicate, or brainstorm with co-workers, classmates, friends, etc. in real time. Set up a group, follow each other, and any ideas you post (and replies) will be seen by everyone instantly for a fast and effective exchange of ideas. Subject matter can also be grouped and searched with #hashtags for future reference. It's like super-advanced sms.

And so forth
There are many different uses for Twitter, limited only to peoples' innovation and ideas. I've outlined some broad and general uses, but the specifics depend on want you want or need out of the site. There is a good chance that you find something useful or fun to do with it.
Anybody have a good suggestion for a unique use for Twitter?

Must...Focus...

Just a quick blurb to say that after some thinking and having read a blog post from Robert Scoble (@scobleizer on twitter), I have decided to focus this blog on tech and create a separate blog for music or any other topics, as the new header of the page now reflects. I'll leave the 2 music posts that are here and copy them to the new blog as well. This change will only be noticed by the 2 or 3 people who actually have read this site, but I thought I'd point it out anyway since I was bored.

SocialScope for BlackBerry

I got an invite yesterday to test the new alpha of SocialScope. It's a Twitter/Facebook client for BlackBerry that so far I really like. At least the Twitter side.

The Facebook side needs more functionality before I can completely replace the native Facebook client on my Berry (which is due this year for an upgrade itself, all the more catching up to do here). On Facebook you can update your status and see your feed. That's about it. You can't message, write on a wall, poke anyone, or upload a photo. Needs some work.

The Twitter functionality is much better, with the ability to update status, DM someone, @reply, or view your favorites. You can also choose "more from sender" which opens another tab with just the stream from that person. Nice! It could be even better, though, with the ability to add a tab for a search item, like following hashtagged conversations.

The interface, however, is just incredible, much better than my twitterberry interface. SocialScope shows your Facebook and Twitter feeds in-line together, or you can choose the tab for one or the other. Twitterberry offers "public timeline" and "follow" as options, but on my mobile device I only want to see who I'm already following. You can also see your friends list on twitterberry, which would be a nice addition to SocialScope.

All-in-all I love this app. With a few tweaks and additions, it could easily become the Twitter and Facebook client of choice on the BlackBerry.

Replacing Outlook with Gmail

So I drive some of my friends crazy hounding them to get rid of their Outlook, among other microsucks products (please switch to openoffice if you are reading this). I can't help it, I'm a fan of things other than Microsoft, and I like to do things just a bit differently when I can. Maybe it makes me feel like a superior snob, I don't know. Anyway, Firefox and Google are certainly doing their part in making it easy for me to never use a Redmond product. I have replaced all of my desktop calendar, email, task, etc. tools with Google products and Firefox add-ons.

Gmail is the hub. I have several email accounts converging there and Gmail let's me send mail as whichever identity I like for a particular email. With the 7+ GB (and growing) size of the mailbox, I never have to delete anything or worry about running out of room. They good folks at Gmail have been steadily adding features lately that allow me to do more there and to get rid of some of the FF add-ons I had for things like tasks. You need to have the "labs" section enabled to get some of these things working. So the email part is obvious, for the most part. I get objections like "but it doesn't have folders for my email". If you're using FF(and you should be), a few add-ons are a must until Google gets native support for this and a few other things. See my post about FF add-ons. Better Gmail gives you hierarchical folders for gmail, just like your precious Outlook. And Xoopit organizes the pictures, videos, and files you receive in your email automatically and awesomely. Choosing an email or a contact will render a complete (Xoopit-based) list of any files sent from that person at any time. The search for your mail is from Google, of course, and is a billion times better than the search feature in your puny Outlook. You can find that needle in your million-email haystack whenever you need to, with ease.

Alright, so we've established that you need Firefox as your browser and Gmail as your email client. Then there's the calendar. I use Google calendar for a variety of reasons. It may not have all of the features of some other calendar clients, but it has most of them, it's easy to use, and it is integrated well with Gmail (obviously). You can easily share and manage multiple calendars of your own or your family, staff, etc. I have a personal and a work calendar and share my wife's calendar, as well as 9 or 10 shared calendars from different people at work. You can show any of them you want at a given time to see overlaps or conflicts, and easily drag and drop items to change times or copy items from one calendar to another. Gmail labs now has an integrated calendar view sidebar so you can see your month at a glance and upcoming agenda items on the same page as your email. You can also create a new calendar event from emails or, with the (awesome) Ubiquity FF add-on, from anything on any web page. The calendar is also easily sync-ed OTA with my BlackBerry.

Using Google Docs and the integrated Docs sidebar for Gmail allows quick access to text, spreadsheet, slideshow, and other documents. Gmail labs also now allows you to create a document out of any email, a very nice feature indeed. I use Google Docs extensively and convinced my company to use it for central storage of and distribution of company documents, so these kinds of features are invaluable to me.

The new integrated tasks feature in Gmail is very basic, but very functional and meets my needs. It has a nice feature of making a task out of an email with a click or 2, which helps me to remember things I need to do from emails without having to remember which colored stars I use for what (another labs feature).

This addresses the basic needs of an office suite, but there are many more advanced functions you can squeeze out of your Google/Firefox environment that will do just about anything you can think of to make you more productive and organized. What tricks do you make your Gmail do to replace other apps?