"Tweet, Tweet"

Not so long ago when I was on a fitness spree, sweating it out daily for almost 45 minutes on the treadmill, the only place my eyes used to be glued to would be the TV monitor attached to it. I would religiously follow reruns of some of MTv India's very popular reality shows (read "Roadies", "Splitsvilla"), and that helped with the running. Most of the times, I'd notice some "Twitter Feeds" scrolling at the bottom of the screen. That was, my dear friends, the first time I actually saw Twitter in action.

I used to wonder then what this Twitter thing was all about. The name was catchy, no doubt. Twitter. It's almost like you hear the birds in your ears when you hear that word. Twitter.

At first, I thought it was just another complicated, sophisticated service on the Web that people were raving about. The new "In Thing", or so I thought. I never bothered to look it up - I could see some of my blogger friends were starting to use it, but since I already had two very active Facebook and Orkut profiles, I really wasn't too keen to set up another one just like that. So I left it alone. Until today.

Today I got a request from a contact of mine to start using Twitter. After having ignored the call for so long (besides I terribly needed a break from the really hectic day I was having), I thought of giving it a go. So I accepted the request, went to the registration page, entered values for just 4-5 fields (unlike FB or Orkut where you need to fill in an entire application form to create an account!), and that was it! I was a “tweeter”!

So what is this thing? Twitter calls itself a "micro-blogging" service with just one question for its users to answer: What are you doing? And it holds true to its name. It is a micro-blogging site, and all you really need to do is answer that one basic question, but you get only 140 characters to do that. Very much like your standard text message (also known as “SMS”). That is why it is a “micro” blogging site – because 140 characters for a blogger is, well, an insult! Twitter also calls itself a “social network” service (akin to the concept of Facebook or Orkut), and that is because in Twitter, you have a list of your followers (who follow what you are doing) and a list of your followings (people whom you follow). So what a “tweeter” is needed to do is update what he/she is doing, and that status is shown to that person’s followers. Simple, isn’t it? Of course, Twitter has evolved and mobile “tweeting” is an integral part of it. You can register your device and you can “tweet” from your mobile, and (only in some select countries, damn!) can receive “tweets” of people you follow. Twitter also has a mobile website (http://m.twitter.com) and that gives its users another option to “tweet” from.

The principal idea is to help people broadcast their current status on-the-go. And to share that information with that person’s chosen followers. Of course, you can customize whom to block, who to send updates to (create a restricted followers group), send direct messages – stuff which is but expected from such a site.

Now ardent Facebook users will think that this is very similar to the status message present there. And yes, I would agree with that. In fact, the concept is more or less the same. Because in both the services, you set your current status (of course you can post URL’s in both as well) and your friends/followers get to know that. However, I feel the primary difference where Twitter scores over Facebook (only in this regard) is the delivery/update of current status by sending direct SMS’s to the Twitter server (or, Twitter phone numbers). That, my friends, is definitely on-the-go and Facebook does not provide that kind of mobility.

So how is it useful? Consider this scenario: You’re returning home from work late one night, but your car/cab breaks down in a desolate place with nobody and nothing around, except your mobile signal. You could contact your friends or family, but you’d need to call/SMS them one by one which would not be such a great idea because you don’t know what they’d be doing at that time. Besides, what if you had balance only for one call/SMS? The other option would be for you to simply broadcast your state through some medium and let your friends respond to that. This is where Twitter would come in to the picture. Of course, Twitter is more used for fun activities rather than such scenarios! :)

As for me, well, today’s my first day as a “tweeter” and quite honestly, I am beginning to like it. Besides all the functional stuff, ‘simplicity’ is what Twitter is all about and it easily shows.

Try it – it’s much easier than you think! And of course, a lot of fun too!

(The author tweets @ https://twitter.com/arch_hornet)