gutfeel.com

Recently, someone asked me to write an article about ‘Twitter Fan buttons’ which that guy was promoting on his website. I had to refuse the task because even after much research I could not find a way to elaborate the topic. However, in the process, I realized how this twitter thing is picking up over the Internet and how some people are even labeling it the next best thing after blogging. So what is twitter exactly?

Twitter is a social networking utility which keeps you connected in real-time with colleagues, friends, and family. It is a free service as of now. You will just have to register, and you can send and receive updates to and from your network. These updates are in the form of text-based messages up to 140 characters known as ‘tweets’. The length of the messages is a unique selling proposition as far as the twitter owners are concerned. The logic is that most of the times people do not have much time to write a blog post about something they feel strongly about or just want to share with others. Sometimes, they may not have the required skills to blog. Therefore, these tweets are a convenient way to update others about yourself or receive updates from others.

These tweets are displayed on the author’s page and are instantly delivered to the subscribers, who are known as ‘followers’ in twitter language. You have the option to restrict the updates to the followers or you can allow open access to everyone. Its up to you how you wish to use the service.

The other significant aspect of twitter is the mode of receiving tweets. You can either keep a tab of the tweets on the twitter website, www.twitter.com, or choose to receive them over sms, which will cost you the sms fee.

This service has been used remarkably in the latest American Presidential campaign. Some other celebrities who are well-known twitter users are Stephen Fry (the British comedian who is supposed to have the largest fan following on twitter), Aston Kutcher, Britney Spears, Shashi Tharoor and the likes.

However, how beneficial this service is supposed to be for people like you and me is debatable. We are anyway bombarded with too much information from all fronts. Do we need to know more? How much tab do we wish to keep on our circle of friends? Or how much real-time information can you really absorb or are willing to share with say 50 other people? IMHO all these aspects will be important as far as the success of twitter is concerned. We already have Myspace, Facebook, and orkut. Do we need more…But I guess today’s me-too generation will not give twitter owners any reason of disappointment!