Tweet, tweet, Twitter – it’s all the rage
Mac Tip #381, 22 April 2009

Talk to friends, family, colleagues, strangers in 20 words or less, over the Internet.

Twitter sprang up in March 2006, and since then has rocketed into global awareness.

The Twitter Home Page

It allows you to publish messages up to 140 characters long, for all the world to see (or you can restrict messages to approved viewers only). 140 characters amounts to about 20 words.

That’s just enough text to be able to publish one carefully encapsulated thought per tweet.

What usually happens is that people scoff and mock Twitter until they try it for themselves. Then many of them grasp its usefulness and start to enjoy its benefits.

Click the thumbnails for larger versions. Note: I’ve deliberately blurred out the names and tweets in two of these screenshots.

A blurred out series of tweets on a web page

After you join Twitter you see a web page where you can enter your text, and read messages that have been sent by your ‘followers’. It’s annoying though to always have to view a web page to keep up with the conversation, so many people use free or low-cost software.

There are many choices, with new software popping up all the time. Just in the last few weeks I’ve switched around between about 5 different applications — I use Twitter on my Mac, my iPhone and my iPod touch.

A blurred out series of tweets on Tweetie for Mac.

My current favourite Twitter application on both my Mac and my iPhone / iPod touch is Tweetie. It’s ad-supported on the Mac and costs around NZ$4.00 for the iPhone version. If you have an iPhone or iPod touch and want to try using Twitter without spending $4 then try Twitterfon, as it’s also very good.

If you’d like to try Twitter but don’t know anyone else using it, then start by following some news, business, or other services. It’s an interesting way to keep up with what’s going on. Here are a few to try:

• twitter.com/cnn (CNN News)
• twitter.com/bbcnews (BBC News)
• twitter.com/MarsRovers (Mars Rovers)
• twitter.com/flyairnz (Air New Zealand)
• twitter.com/metiria (Green MP, Metiria Turei)
• twitter.com/barackobama (US President, Barack Obama)
• twitter.com/TidBITS (TidBITS Mac newsletter)
• twitter.com/takecontrol (publish excellent Take Control ebooks for Mac users)

I see I’ve written about Twitter quite often on my KnowIT blog. These 3 posts may interest you if you don’t know much about Twitter already:

• Surprise service to support groups
• Twitter tricks
• Tips for using iPod touch with Twitter, Gmail and RSS feeds

If you want to follow me personally on Twitter, I’m at: twitter.com/Miraz. I don’t aim to write about deep and meaningful things — many of my tweets are about my dogs, or everyday stuff.

Or follow MacTips on Twitter.