Today, I Joined Twitter

I have a confession to make. In my quest to stay on top of technology I somehow failed with Twitter. I heard of Twitter months ago, and just never made the time and effort to figure out what it was all about. Through my blog subscriptions I have read about many uses for Twitter. PR professionals are pitching stories through Twitter, and journalists are covering them. People use Twitter to self-promote or to follow their favorite corporations or celebrities. According to one article, President Obama announced his running mate via Twitter. So, today I finally decided to do my homework about this unique social medium.

I read an article by David Pogue of the New York Times called Twittering Tips for Beginners. I was comforted by his opening, in which he said that he too was late getting started with Twitter.

Please read Pogue's tips for new Twitter-er's in the quoted text below. If you want to know more, follow the link to the full article above, where you can read his complete explanation of each tip (some are not very clear unless you read on).

If you are on Twitter, what are your helpful hints for us newbies? Oh, and if you'd like to follow me, my twitter name is christinamarcus.

Pogue's tips:

"* You don’t have to open your Web browser and go to Twitter.com to send and receive tweets.

* Your followers can respond to your tweets, either publicly or privately.

* It seems clear that you, as a tweet-sender, are not actually expected to respond to every reply.

* 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. I found one rule, though, that answered a long-standing question I had about Twitter: “Don’t tweet about what you’re doing right now.”

* People can be just as snotty on Twitter as they are everywhere else on the Internet.

* Another person criticized me for not following enough other Twitterers. The implication was that if you send out tweets but don’t subscribe to a lot of other people, you’re an egotist."

And Pogue's conclusion is:

"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."