58
Twitter
Released March, 2006
The Pros:Great for up to the minute news. Useful when used within a circle of friends. Can interact with the service through many different devices.
The Cons:Used primarily for self-promotion services. Inundated with a lot of spam posts and people. The actual website twitter.com isn't that good.
Twitter is a social networking site founded in 2006 as a service to allow friends and co-workers to communicate and stay up to date with each other through the use of tweets. Tweets are 140 character length messages which answer the basic question, "what are you doing?".
Users publish these tweets to their profile pages and everyone who has signed up to follow that particular user will receive the tweets as well. This micro-blogging framework has enabled news organizations, politicians and celebrities to interact with the community of users and provide real time updates in a way traditional media (newspapers, blogs, etc..) was never able to do.
User Reviews (17)
Pros & Cons
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12
Great for up to the minute news
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12
Useful when used within a circle of friends
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11
Can interact with the service through many different devices
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10
Intriguing new method of communication
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9
Awesome 3rd party applications
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6
#topic based tweets are useful for monitoring activity on a topic
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5
If you are careful with who you follow it can be very effective at keeping yourself informed in areas that interest you (business, local, news, industry, etc.)
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4
Follow celebrities directly
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2
Trending topics / popular keywords is an interesting way to monitor Internet buzz
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2
Useful to ensure free speech
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2
Essentially you can ask the "Internet" a question and receive a response
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-1
Individuals can become celebrity-like, per the content they post
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12
Used primarily for self-promotion services
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9
Inundated with a lot of spam posts and people
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7
The actual website twitter.com isn't that good
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7
140 character restriction limits the amount of info users can include in their tweets
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7
unforgiving for typos, spelling and grammatical errors..can't correct them
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2
If you're not a celebrity no one cares about you
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2
can be difficult for ordinary individuals to develop a large enough following to make daily tweeting worthwhile
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0
Website goes down frequently
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Comments (4)
Erik: Welcome to ProductWiki Talk!
Talk is a platform for our community to talk about products. It's centrallized area where our community can come together and talk to each other.
To start a new conversation, simply type it in the text box found on this page and click post. You'll also find Talk on all product pages.
Other community members will see your post and have the opportunity to reply to you or simply "like" what you've said. If you've used
#facebook,
#twitter,
#google_buzz, or forums you'll find many familiar elements. We tried to combine the best elements of social media and apply it to our niche.
We don't know exactly how everyone will use it, but here are some ideas to get you started:
- ask for advice about which product to get
- follow a new product launch
- ask for product support
- off-topic discussions about news, movies, sports
So what do you think?
Oct 29, 10
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6 people like this
Howlsthunder:
#twitter I originally avoided Twitter for the same reasons Omar listed - it seemed like "vacuous self-promotion" in soundbytes and I personally prefer to have deep, meaningful communication.
But then two friends of mine got me to try Twitter. They see it as a place to put out spur-of-the-moment interesting or intelligently humerous thoughts that would otherwise not be welcome in, say, LiveJournal where we all post much more substantial thoughts. Not all people I know are capable of this so I don't follow those friends. ;) But its entertaining enough.
Not a month after I got Twitter I found its best use as a topic monitor for items of importance that I need to know ASAP. I live in Alaska and right now we have a volcano going off, spewing ash clouds that may or may not interfere with my day. The Alaska Volcano Observatory has a Twitter feed for volcano updates, complete with links to relevant websites showing fallout warnings and ash trajectories.
I think Twitter can be pretty hit or miss in terms of what people you follow, but I seem to of found a use for it and I rather like it for now.
Mar 31, 09
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Omar:
#twitter I go through an undulating love-hate relationship with Twitter. When I first heard about it I thought it was stupid frivolity. Then I saw some useful applications and joined up. Got connected with the local tech community but found that it was a lot of vacuous self-promotion (including myself). I quit it for about 6 months, and now it's become huge, and now the vacuous self-promotion is actually it's biggest use.
So, now I've come back to it and I find that it IS a lot more bustling, but it's fundamentally the same vacuous self-promotion, which makes it difficult to take too seriously.
Right now I see it as a necessary evil. I actually don't like it that much, but I need to be a player in the game. Gotta keep up with those digital Jones somehow.
Mar 20, 09
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