How to get started on Twitter, an emerging Communication Tool

Twitter may be overhyped, but in the long run, it will be a normal communication tool. Some of the folks that I see using it are early adopters, some which are hyping it up and some which are not. It’s a supplement to other forms such as blogging or IM.

What’s interesting, is that my network is telling me what they think of things, and giving me links of things to read, that I might normally have NOT seen.

While I’ve not slowed down by blogging, I have reduced my feedreader reading because of Twitter, I find this conversation to be faster, more interactive, and entertaining. I realize I’m an early adopter, and being in silicon valley with many friends that are also early adopters we may just seeing the start of the hype cycle.

Either way, if you’re watching social media trends for your company or clients, I encourage you to get started to trial Twitter. Rafe Needelman of CNET (Who I interviewed this week for my video Web Strategy show) is a smart guy and has created the How-to: The Newbie’s Guide to Twitter, which he told me he was going to write. It’s worth checking out, even if you’re not going to use it for the long term, just understand the medium.

Once you’ve done that, you can add me as a friend, my profile is Jowyang. I don’t have my cell phone getting the alerts, that would be insane, but I do have the browser window open all the time, and am watching the conversation.

I just updated my Media Consumption Diet and added Twitter. Watch out however, this could be a hyped fad.

Related:
-Listen in to Des Walsh’s review and analysis of Twitter and this post.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2007 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Web Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.