Twitter

Barry Nelson

As I have stated before, I am probably one of the older members of this site and I admit I am not always up on the latest hot trend, but I really don't understand Twitter. It seems all the major league athletes and hot celebrities use Twitter to communicate, but to who, because I don't know anyone that follows Twitter. No one I work with, no one I commute with, my kids who very in age from 14 to 23 never use Twitter, so who is reading Twitter. Even some of the talking head news shows tell folks to check out their Twitter site, or read my latest Tweet.

So if anyone here uses Twitter let me know what you use it for. I would also like to know if Twitter is just a silly American thing, or if its use is more international. Thanks for helping an old mad out.

Sir Hillary Bray

My personal view...Twitter is a technology platform that is limited in its utility. It is fabulous for the "senders", the people who want to more directly reach a greater audience -- athletes, musicians, columnists, bloggers, etc. It's direct marketing taken to the extreme. For the "receivers" it's like voyeurism, as if you got a text from someone famous -- "oooh, Shaquille O'Neal just texted me!" Nevermind that 100,000 others got the same text. Eventually, that novelty will wear off, especially with a character limit that forces the mundane updates like "stepping out of the shower now!" or "Kanye's an idiot!"

To me the key is in exactly what you said, Barry -- kids are already communicating among each other via texting. So what does Twitter really add for them? Without young adopters, there's only so far you can go.

Just my opinion.

Pendragon

I'm on twitter, and I find it a useful way to send quick messages to my friends, or get a thought out. The way I use twitter is NOT the way most people think it's used. There are commercials and things that make it out to seem that everyone tweets things like "Sitting in my chair" or "walking to class"....which are dumb and mundane things that no one wants to hear about. I actually say something with the 140 characters given.

Also, I follow many celebrities, just to see what they're up to with projects and things. It's not really just used in the US. I have several international friends who use it.

I am 21, so I might get more out of it than other people might. http://twitter.com/Kelsey_Burd (that's my page if people wanted to see what it looked like)

jetsetwilly

Twitter's enabled me to chat to people I previously only knew through the internet, and has actually helped me to make friends online. I think the problem with it is until you have a few people following you, and a few people to follow you, and then you interact with one another, it seems completely pointless. There seems to be a "critical level" and until you reach that you don't see the point. It can be brilliant fun - live tweeting during The Apprentice was hilarious, as me and my followers/those I followed sat in different parts of the country and bounced jokes and comments off one another.

If all you do is follow celebs (a lot of whom are actually just PR feeds from a bored IT bod somewhere) then you won't get the full joy of Twitter.

Monique

I follow quite a few people on Twitter and saw this "tweet" the other night which I found quite funny, and just had to share for obvious reasons....


A cell phone went off during the new play with Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig. Craig stopped talking and said "wanna get that?"
6:51 PM Sep 19th from TinyTwitter


Leave it to Danny....breaking the fourth wall. )

Pendragon

haha good for him :x

Loeffelholz

I'm on Twitter now---username is MarkLoeffelholz (I'm nothing if not original) It's interesting. I'm being followed by Karl Rove )

As to what I use it for...soon, it will be to promote a book -{ ...and if it leads to a single sale, it will have been worth my time.

EDIT: Found Pen on Twitter...the world just keeps getting smaller B-)

FelixLeiter ♀

I find it useful and though have heard people are put off about trying to 'fit it in', i find that hard to believe when it is really not very time consuming at all.

i am TerryLCooper

Pendragon

Loeffelholz wrote:

Found Pen on Twitter...the world just keeps getting smaller B-)

ha! that you did. and I'm sure it'll be great for book promotions!!!

Jamesbondjr

I have registered on Twitter to follow a few people who interest me, mainly video game peoples to get news. If anyone wants to find me on there I am GrahamSnape. Doubt i'll tweet much though

Lady Rose

I recently discovered Twitter ... cant stay away from it now. I dont 'tweet' as such but I do 'follow' quite a few people and news feeds. The news feeds in particular are very good often btreaking news before any other medium.

One to follow if you are a Bond fan is of course @007 which is the official James Bond twitter account and posts some very interesting bits and pieces most days ....

Mr Beech

Twitter is just good for famous people to give a stream to their overly concerned fans IMO. I find it so silly when people who aren't famous, such as peers and teens, want to tweet. It is no use if you are not famous. It is the same as Facebook statuses. I'd say that when I was on twitter to follow people, less than 5% of the tweets I read actually had value. Takes way too much time to find the important tweets, so it is better to just go and read about this stuff in news sites.

I liked Seth MacFarlane's tweets and some others, but I just don't check it much anymore. So many useless thoughts come out of there with things that no one should care about.

jetsetwilly

Lady Rose wrote:

I recently discovered Twitter ... cant stay away from it now. I dont 'tweet' as such but I do 'follow' quite a few people and news feeds. The news feeds in particular are very good often btreaking news before any other medium.

One to follow if you are a Bond fan is of course @007 which is the official James Bond twitter account and posts some very interesting bits and pieces most days ....

"Today in Bond history" has been a brilliant innovation on the @007 account.

Lady Rose

jetsetwilly wrote:

"Today in Bond history" has been a brilliant innovation on the @007 account.

Yeah, nice little tit bits .....

Lady Rose

Bond related Twitter from Piers Morgan today ....

'more surviving 007 ( Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan, Craig) than US Presidents ( Carter, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama) '

Mr Beech

Lady Rose wrote:

Bond related Twitter from Piers Morgan today ....

'more surviving 007 ( Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan, Craig) than US Presidents ( Carter, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama) '

-{

Napoleon Plural

Can I ask, do you need a smartphone to send tweets or what? How do you round up people to tweet, or do they have to find you? Is it just a collective text message?

Mr Beech

Napoleon Plural wrote:

Can I ask, do you need a smartphone to send tweets or what? How do you round up people to tweet, or do they have to find you? Is it just a collective text message?

You can tweet through twitter.com or an app on a mobile device. To tweet with people you know, you must know their twitter username like @007 or @TIME. Then you can start following each other's tweets by clicking Follow. Twitter will keep a list of any user you chose to Follow. If you are looking for a major publicly known Twitter feed, such as Time Magazine, you can just google 'Time Magazine Twitter' and it will be found easily. Some small users, like your friends, can sometimes be set to private so you need to wait for their approval before you can follow the tweets. After that, you pretty much say what you want in 140 characters and then anyone following will see it (like a Facebook status). If you want someone to know it is a comment or question meant for them to respond to, you start the tweet with @username ...message...

I think that is still how it works. I haven't checked on any updates there in a while.

Lady Rose

Napoleon Plural wrote:

Can I ask, do you need a smartphone to send tweets or what? How do you round up people to tweet, or do they have to find you? Is it just a collective text message?

Its really easy to follow on twitter ... all public people/actors/comics and agencies will be just a quick click on 'follow' and off you go. . The 'real' ones will be verified with a blue tick too ... I tend to follow a lot of news feeds ... Sky News, LBC, Jon Snow , Police, TFL , etc ...

It gets more complicated when you start with privacy settings. That restricts what you can send and who you can message ...

I dont really tweet myself, I just tend to follow celebs and news feeds ( STALKER ALERT !!!!) ....

Barry Nelson

I have become more involved in twitter, I'm not addicted, but I do visit once a week or so. I received a surprise one day when a CNBC anchor woman I follow responded to me after I sent her a tweet about a story she did. I had mention I thought one of her facts was wrong, she responded with an explanation of where she got her facts from. She has since tweeted me twice more.

I don't follow any entertainment or sports figures, mostly energy industry and news sites. I know, pretty boring.

Mr Beech

Barry Nelson wrote:

I have been become more involved in twiiter, I'm not addicted, but I do visit once a week or so. I received a surprise one day when a CNBC anchor woman I follow responded to me after I sent her a tweet about a story she did. I had mention I thought one of her facts was wrong, she responded with an explanation of where she got her facts from. She has since tweeted me twice more.

I don't follow any entertainment or sports figures, mostly energy industry and news sites. I know, pretty boring.

Personally, I think news organizations are the best ones to follow on Twitter. It is a useful update system. I think celebrity tweets are almost entirely useless. It is the kind of stuff that you don't care about when your Facebook friends post it and it just gets in the way of the good information that good sources tweet eventually.

I say go for it if you are curious about some news streams. I personally am not big on Twitter these days, but I do look at minimum every other week.

Moore Than

I discovered Twitter not too long ago. I checked out a few celebrity and sports stars tweets to discover what all the fuss was about and thought it was pretty rubbish to be honest.

It was only the day before yesterday that I realised what a force for good Twitter can be. As a storm chasing fan I follow Reed Timmer. He was tweeting regular updates of a Tornado outbreak giving all the latest weather updates and images and giving advance warnings to people in the likely path of the Tornado's.

Monique

I actually heard about the demise of Bin Laden on Twitter that night right before they broke into programming to officially announce it. Twitter is a very powerful thing!!

And it's very cool when a celeb tweets you, I gotta say!

Mr Martini

Monique wrote:

I actually heard about the demise of Bin Laden on Twitter that night right before they broke into programming to officially announce it. Twitter is a very powerful thing!!

And it's very cool when a celeb tweets you, I gotta say!

Just curious, which Celeb tweeted you? I've only had one celeb respond to one of my tweets. Of course, I did give this person the same tweet numerous times over several months. In the end, what I tweeted to the celeb never happened. Oh well, maybe in the 2012 Tour.

Lady Rose

Monique wrote:

And it's very cool when a celeb tweets you, I gotta say!

) .. Totally agree. I got all childlike and excited when a local radio guy replied to one of mine ... pathetic really

jetsetwilly

I once got a "kiss" from Russell Tovey. I can die a happy man.

Lady Rose

jetsetwilly wrote:

I once got a "kiss" from Russell Tovey. I can die a happy man.

Ok ... lets get the ball rolling and see who's had the 'best' retweet/mention on twitter ...

A local radio DJ doesn't cut the mustard does it ? ....

I'm going to harrass Ant and Dec until I get a reply and then start on Gary Barlow ...... :v

Jamesbondjr

I had a conversation on Twitter with Mark Kermode

Moore Than

A representative of Twitter was giving evidence earlier today at the Leveson Inquiry here in the UK. He was there to answer legal issues regarding Twitter's terms/conditions, removal of tweets/accounts etc.

Amongst all this he revealed some very interesting information. It took three years to reach the one billionth tweet. Now it takes less than four days to reach the same number. He later compared the Super Bowl of four years ago to that of last Sunday. In 2008 there were twenty seven tweets per second compared to twelve thousand tweets per second last Sunday.

Quite staggering as the numbers are, what would they be if Twitter were able to gain access to China?

Mr Beech

I still don't get why "normals" tweet. Who are you tweeting to? Do you honestly know people who want to hear your quips about Madonna? Twitter is good for following public figures and brands, but I just don't see why any of my peers want to tweet to anyone as if they really have a following of more than 5 people that actually want to read that.

Am I off here?

Monza860

I use it to follow celebrities, sports teams, keeps me up to date on lots of stuff and companies, products. Does anyone care to hear what I have to say, no, do i care and write stuff, no. I have gotten a couple responses back when writing to celebrities though, always makes a day that they know you exist. ) If it wasn't for twitter i would forget or miss out on so much stuff and updates, i just cant live without it now.