Twitter to the Ready: Catch What I'm Doing -- Well, If I Choose to Tell

As you may have noticed within the last couple of days, I'm now telling you what I'm doing-- that is, I feel like divulging it, thanks to Twitter, the hot, social networking and microblogging phenomenon.

Just look to your left under the "Get Inspired" heading, and you'll see the new "Twitter Updates" section.

Twitter, which allows you to use instant messaging, SMS or a web interface (whatever those are -- OK, I know about the former) -- is all the vogue among techno people in the know.

But you need to talk in quick sound bites. You can only write little-iddy-biddy updates up to 140 characters. (That'll be good for those of us who tend towards the more wordy and need a good editor to rein in our copy. No names mentioned, but I can think of a few blogger friends who should join me in an effort to be more concise. Admittedly, I'm also one of the worst offenders, as my two favorite editors will attest.)

Anyhow, I'm still learning how best to use Twitter so I hope you'll enjoy my first fumbling entries and have fun with me as I'm figuring this out.

By the way, so far, some 2.2 million Twitter accounts were created, as of July 2008, according to Wikipedia. Not bad for a company that launched nearly two years ago, in Oct. 2006, as Crunchbase also informs us.

Already, a number of Twitterers have fans, as this Twitterholic website attests.

FYI, reportedly, the top three Twitter users--with 50,000-plus followers are Barack Obama, Kevin Rose, and LeoLaporter.

Since I'm a Twitter newbie -- even though I joined a year ago and posted all of one post until a few days ago -- I advise you to get educated by much more savvy media types than me.

Just read some of their informative items, such as those from Steve Rubel, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Charles Cooper (on cnet), Chris Brogan and Daniel Scocco.

One of the most fascinating applications of Twitter is that news outlets such as CNN, the BBC are using Twitter to disseminate breaking news or offer information feeds for sporting events, according to Wikipedia. Suffice it to say that I'm very intrigued.

Still confused as to what's Twitter's all about?

Check out this video explaining Twitter in Plain English.

Thanks to the online health journalism group to which I belong for bringing up the Twitter topic and renewing my interest in this subject.