What The Hell is Twitter and Why Should I Care?
See also: What the Heck is a Tweet?
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In way of full disclosure, I’ll start by saying that I harbor a mild Twitter addiction. I’m a fairly new user to the service, and I joined up under relentless pressure encouragement from a friend. Before signing up, I peppered him with questions like, “What is Twitter?” and “Why should I care?” He didn’t have any good answers to my questions, instead insisting that I just give it a try.
Fast forward to now. Suddenly, I’m a bit of a fanatic, evangelizing Twitter myself. Inevitably, I get asked the same types of questions which I’ll try to answer here.
What Is Twitter?
Twitter began with a simple premise (as most genius ideas do). A fellow named Jack Dorsey simply wanted to know what his friends were doing. Since then, it’s exploded into much more than a series of status updates. It’s now a forum for micro-blogging. Twitter’s usage has grown to around 6 million users, boosting it into 3rd place amongst social networking sites, lagging only behind giants Facebook and MySpace. For me, two aspects of Twitter set it apart from others: simplicity and authenticity.
A post on Twitter is known as a Tweet (cute, I know) and Tweets are limited to 140 characters (not unlike your 160 character text messages). They can accept hyperlinks and they can be tagged with the @ symbol to direct them to a specific Twitter user (Tweep?) or with the # symbol to make them easily search-able. That’s it.
What Can Twitter Do For You?
Simply put, it allows you to relate to others - simply. You follow others whose feed updates (Tweets) you’d like to see. If others want to see your Tweets, they’ll follow you. I often hear the Tweeting erroneously dismissed as little more than a glorified status update. Rather than post droll details about mundane daily tasks, Twitter users tend to share interesting links, innovative thoughts, carry on authentic discussions, and live-blog events.
Even better, my experience has been that the Twitter community has a high degree of respect for authenticity and innovation as well as a very low tolerance for BS (certainly a plus). That’s more than I can say for my day job, sometimes.
Does Gear Patrol Use Twitter?
Yes, and I’d urge you to follow us. It’s one of the best ways that you can interact directly with the GP Crew and, by doing so, you’ll help spread the word about Gear Patrol. We’re just getting started ourselves and we’ll be sharing more of the personal side of Gear Patrol, announcements, post updates, and behind-the-site action.
Follow Some Of Our Crew’s Feeds
Gear Patrol - @gearpatrol
Dusty Overby - @dustyoverby
Ben Bowers - @benbowersgp
Thomas Lord - @ras0ne
Dan Finkelstein - @mynameisfoxtrot
oh no. not you guys too?! when will the madness end?! twitter is the worst thing to hit the internet since myspace (facebook is slightly ‘less’ bad than myspace which is why i referenced it instead)! i don’t care what people are doing, i don’t care what links they found, at least not to the point of needing a live feed of what’s going on. i certainly hope no one cares that i’m doing so bad that they would want to follow my every update. i most certainly don’t want feeds from websites and political movements as i can browse said websites at my leisure and get more important political information from a much more substantial source, etc, etc, etc. twitter needs to go away. don’t encourage it.
oh, and i work in IT!
Twitter, Tweet, a Tweep, Tweeting…. Huumm WHAT EVER…. All this Twitter Thing just SUCKS!! FACEBOOK is cooler then this Sh…..
why do people have such a strong desire to share themselves with anyone who has internet connection? 3 boring blog pages about the average specimen is rediculous. People are on all day about their blog and how they have 300-plus friends and that they should check their page for comments. I feel as if i'm the only 17 year old without one of these blogs, but proud to say that i don't have one. I'm hearing about twitter on either cnn or msnbc, and that one of the reporters twitter page was going crazy after the news of m. jackson's death. Yeah that sounds really professional. If you create a web page, create a page thats useful, not about your interests and the mood you are in. When adults get stalked, murdered, and all those other terrible things through these great blogging sites… I don't even feel that sorry for the individuals. The younger the blogger, the more careless and unknowledgable they are (generally), then i might feel a little sorry(not important). I wish i could say to twitterers and blog users alike that no1 cares about your page, but obviously they do, but in ten years, none of the stuff you are posting on your page now will matter to anyone.
I've noticed that as social networking has grown in popularity the United States has fallen in power, stature, and influence. Our infrastructure is crumbling, our citizens are unemployed, few can afford health care or a college education.
Maybe if everyone took their texting thumbs out of their ass and did something real and physically beneficial for their fellow citizens this country might have a chance.
Twitter is shit, FaceBook is shit, and Myspace is shit.
All those websites are for people who have a boring ass life and have nothing to do but pry themselves into other people's lives to know information about them.
Go find something to do….
I am highly amused that this post is still generating venomous comments.
I'm a agree with Sponge, " go find something to do" all those site are waste of time!!!
Yeah…totally waste of time and generate profits to the owner. Makes me wonder why the hell so many people using it.
Ok t hen well these are all rather dumb people on here say they don’t blog look at what you are doing now ading to someones page and blogging omg get over selves lawl and for the 17 yr old retard go to hell