NYT columnist David Pogue offers some tips on getting into Twitter.
So I've been Twittering for a couple of months, and I've learned a lot. I'm still dubious about Twitter's prospects for becoming a tool for ordinary people (rather than early-adopter techie types).
But one thing's for sure: The whole thing would be a lot more palatable if somebody would explain the basics. Something like this:
* You don't have to open your Web browser and go to Twitter.com to send and receive tweets. In fact, that's just silly. Instead, people download little programs like Twitterific, Feedalizr or Twinkle, they get the updates on their cellphones as text messages, or they use something like PocketTweets, Tweetie or iTweet for the iPhone. I've been using Twitterific for the Mac, which is a tall, narrow window at the side of the screen. Incoming tweets scroll up without distracting you. Much.
* Your followers can respond to your tweets, either publicly or privately.
Suppose someone named Casey responds to one of your tweets. You can reply to Casey in one of two ways. First, you can send a Direct Message, which only Casey sees. Second, you can respond with another public tweet—but as you can imagine, everyone but Casey will be completely baffled. It's obvious from the number of completely incomprehensible tweets ("No, only in Lichtenstein!") that not all Twitter fans have yet grasped the difference between these reply types.
On the other hand, if you reply with a private Direct Message, Casey can't reply to IT—unless you've also subscribed to *Casey's* Twitter feeds. Seems like a pretty dumb design decision. Either you have to follow the whole world, or every conversation fizzles into silence after one exchange.
* It seems clear that you, as a tweet-sender, are not actually expected to respond to every reply. At least I sure HOPE that's the expectation. I mean, some popular Twitterers have 15,000 followers; you'd spend all day doing nothing but answering them all.
* The Web is full of "rules" about the proper way to Twitter, and a lot of them are just knowier-than-thou garbage: How many tweets a day to send out. How many people you should follow. What you should say. And so on. The first adopters are milking their early advantage for all it's worth.
Here's his closer:
In the end, my impression of Twitter was right and wrong. Twitter IS a massive time drain. It IS yet another way to procrastinate, to make the hours fly by without getting work done, to battle for online status and massage your own ego.
But it's also a brilliant channel for breaking news, asking questions, and attaining one step of separation from public figures you admire. No other communications channel can match its capacity for real-time, person-to-person broadcasting.