I’ve never understood why folks were so into “twitter.” Now I know. It’s addicting. It’s basically “a free social networking and micro-blogging service, that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets)” (wiki). More and more people are subscribing to news feeds, or have desktop applications that alert them in “real time” on news stories, etc… that’s basically what twitter does, but from all the “sites”/people/organizations/news sources you subscribe to via twitter (on one page or in one tiny desktop application.)  Twitter was even first on the map again when the 5.4 California earthquake struck. This helped officials determine when/where it struck.
Through twitter you can alert/notify  people of your status via twitter’s website,  from your phone, or from desktop APIs that directly feed into Twitter. You can also receive alerts/notifications via said routes. I’m still not a master twitter-er… but in time.   I have my twitter account set up so that whenever I update my status (or insert a link to a cool article I found), it syncs up with Facebook so, that my status in Facebook matches my twitter status. Neato AND convenient!  I just downloaded a neato desktop application on my Mac called twhirl. This cute little application is like an RSS  (news) feed updater on steroids. I get updates/tweets every couple of seconds from the folks I’m following (receiving their updates) and I can also insert my own notifications into the API.

Follow me on twitter. www.twitter.com/laurenratliff