Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [12]
Some Twitter users have reported becoming better salespeople offline, or better writers, because Twitter’s mandated brevity forces you to focus your thoughts into concise, direct sound bites. Because Twitter’s communication format encourages brief but engaging ideas, Twitter sparks conversations faster than almost any other Internet conversation format.
Where the name Twitter comes from
We want to get this out of the way: Yes, Twitter is a silly name. It calls to mind images of birds chirping, or the all-night gab-fests at junior high sleepovers. But to be fair, a whole lot of Web services have silly names — in an industry peppered with companies that have names such as Meebo and Veoh, a company called Twitter doesn’t stand out as having a particularly odd moniker. And co-founder Jack Dorsey has argued from the start that Twitter is a fitting name for the service. In an early interview with Jack, Ev, and Biz, (when Twitter was still owned by Obvious, Inc.), the founders answered a question about where the name came from. Jack said, “If you look it up in the dictionary, it’s actually just [a] short burst of activity, and it’s something that birds do. It’s just like chirping.” In this case, the name Twitter reflects the short bursts of “noise” (or tweets) that Twitter users make when they conduct their digital banter. (If you haven’t made the connection already, this definition explains why Twitter’s logo is a cartoon bird. To watch a video of the interview in its entirety, go to www.podtech.net/home/?s=obvious%2C+twitter.)
Branching Out with Third-Party Applications
At the risk of sounding like a Twitter cheerleader, don’t ask “What can you do with Twitter?” Instead, ask yourself, “What can’t you do with Twitter?” From its inception, Twitter has had a very open application programming interface (API), which is the geek-speak term for code that lets external developers and programmers weave the Twitter service and functions into other applications and services on the Web. The open nature of the Twitter API has led some people to come up with very interesting uses for Twitter.
The most popular Twitter applications are downloadable client programs that let you manage and update your Twitter feed from your desktop; vying for most popular are TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com) and Twhirl (www.twhirl.org), but people access Twitter dozens of ways, including (about half of average use) Twitter.com.
More than a thousand already exist. Some are silly (such as HereBeforeOprah [http://herebeforeoprah.com]), some are annoying (such as Magpie [http://be-a-magpie.com]), and some are incredibly useful (such as TwitPic [http://twitpic.com] and HootSuite [http://www.hootsuite.com]). (We cover these tools in Chapter 9.) The beauty of Twitter means that even the silly ideas have a chance to succeed, if the Twitter community responds to them. Because Twitter can do so much, so simply, the array of third-party applications offers a nice balance of work and play.
If you want to stick with using Twitter just as a status update service, that’s fine. In fact, many people do. But if you want to really maximize your use of Twitter, you may want to check out all the neat ways you can use it — for example, to track expenses, request restaurant reviews, follow gas prices, read the news, find out the weather in your area, give hurricane relief to people in need, fundraise, drive cancer awareness, and a whole lot more. This diversity of use makes Twitter a vibrant community