WHAT ARE YOU TWITTERING ON ABOUT?

News

Mark Nolan / 2010-08-27 08:39:54

Twitter is a social networking, micro blogging website, used by people to connect with friends, family and a lot of strangers.

You may have heard of the phenomenon that is Twitter, or maybe you haven´t. But either way, we thought we would take the opportunity to introduce you to the joys of “tweeting”, or at least explain a little bit about what it´s all about.

Twitter is a social networking, micro blogging website, used by people to connect with friends, family and a lot of strangers. That´s the technical explanation, but it is probably more useful if we explain it to you in real life terms.

The easiest way to describe Twitter to you is to give you 2 analogies. The first one is for you to imagine your mobile phone. When you send a text to somebody you have a limited number of characters you can write.

That in itself brought in a change of language with words like “gr8”, “ru ok” and “c u l8r”, thus reducing the amount of characters needed, well Twitter is the same. You have a maximum of 140 characters per message, or Tweet, as they are known.

Now, imagine when you send that single text, that all of your friends can read it too. In fact, the whole world could potentially read it. That might sound scary at first, but if you want to tell all your friends in one go that you are looking at buying a new coat, or that you are thinking of a holiday etc, then it suddenly becomes more useful.

So you tweet “In the shop might buy a new coat. What do you think?” You can also add a picture if you like, but we will talk about that another time. All of your friends can read it, possibly comment and send you their opinions.

The second image I want to conjure up is one of Oxford Street in London. Picture a person holding a large sign on a pole saying “Golf Sale”, usually with an arrow pointing in the direction of the sale. Can you picture it? Well, if you can picture it, I want you to replace the person holding the sign with yourself and the words on that sign with the message you just tweeted about the coat.

Not everybody in the world is going to see the sign, but quite a lot of people will. Most will choose to ignore it, most will not even notice, but a stranger may well come up to you and say something like “I bought a new coat last week from that shop over there” and so, the conversation starts.

So, not only is Twitter a great way to keep in touch with people you know, it is also a great way to meet new friends. You have “followers” (people who can read your messages) and you “follow” people you find of interest.

Both The Leader Newspaper and Exite Radio are on Twitter, but the first thing you need to do is sign up for your free account. To do that, visit www.twitter.com and choose a user name and password. Fill in your email address and that´s it, you are ready to Tweet. Get all your friends to join too and build your very own social network site.

Once you are comfortable, you will even be able to use Twitter to contact businesses, celebrities, find out about local events, news and information, and even make money! But, one step at a time. Sign up and follow The Leader and Exite Radio.

We will put a list of Twitter accounts to follow on our website www.theleader.info, we look forward to Tweeting you.

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http://twitter.com/leadernewspaper - The Leader Newspaper.
http://twitter.com/ExiteRadio - Exite Radio.
http://twitter.com/Mark_A_Nolan - Exite Radio´s Mark Nolan.
http://twitter.com/ukinspain - British Consulate in Alicante.
http://twitter.com/britishabroad - The Foreign Office.
http://twitter.com/foreignoffice - The UK Foreign Office.
http://twitter.com/valenciaregion - Valencia tourist board.
http://twitter.com/BenidormTweets - Updates from the set of ITV´s Benidorm.
http://twitter.com/JakeCanuso - Actor who plays barman Mateo in Benidorm.
http://twitter.com/tuitrafico_feed - Traffic reports in Spanish.
http://twitter.com/AccuWx - Weather reports.
http://twitter.com/holidayinnalc - Alicante Holiday Inn.
http://twitter.com/lashabaneras - Habaneras shopping centre, Torrevieja.
http://twitter.com/Rowetta_X - Rowetta, singer who was interviewed on Exite Radio.
http://twitter.com/benstockbiz - Ben Stock, actor who appeared on Exite Radio.
http://twitter.com/BboySwagger - Street dancer who was interviewed on Exite Radio.