You should be on Twitter - creating serendipities and building community

Twitter is an incredible tool for so many reasons, it's worthy of a separate blog post and discussion. If you don't know what Twitter is, watch the brief video below to get a good overview (the video only skims the surface of it though):



A couple of reasons I enjoy using Twitter is it creates serendipities and builds community. Only today, we were celebrating our school's 90-year anniversary. I noticed Malcolm Turnbull was in attendence so decided to send him a notice on Twitter (I am wondering if he is actually using it or employs a ghost writer. See for yourself by visiting his Twitter profile here.)

Here's where the serendipitous moment occurred. Later in the day I checked my email and noticed that one of my Facebook friends (a past-teacher from the school who has relocated overseas) had "commented on my status" I realised immediately, that although this person wasn't even on Twitter, that they had seen my status update which had automatically been sent to Facebook via the Twitter/Facebook application. This person was pleased to be reminded of the event I was attending and had said so in their comment. I was really chuffed by that moment, as it showed how something so simple as a Twitter update (sent from my phone with an investment of time of no more than a few moments) had put me back in touch with them, and caused them some happiness and fond memories.

Creating serendipities and building community - two good reasons you should be on Twitter.

All the world's a Twitter - join the conversation!

Hey there folks, it's been quite a while between posts, with Megan back at University studying full time, a busy work/family life, and Twitter, writing on my blogs has been affected. Not that I haven't been spending time online - there's plenty of good reason to do so, and Twitter is one of them.

Twitter? This site is increasingly becoming a daily port of call in my online travels. I joined this interesting social networking site a few months ago (hat tip to my mate Aaron Saikovski who first mentioned it to me over coffee late last year - Aaron will be presenting at the next SBTUG, and just announced he will be joining Microsoft from 4th July - congratulations Aaron.

I find Twitter fascinating because it connects me in to a "conversation" - you get to control who you listen to, talk to, and it happens in near real-time. If you "listen" to people you are interested in, it can yield great benefits - access to current breaking news, interesting links, and new connections with people across diverse geographies.

It reminds me of LinkedIn Answers but "turbo-charged" in that you're likely to get responses to a question in minutes rather than hours.

I recommend you visit http://www.twitter.com/ and create an account. Even before doing that, check out this post which provides an easy-to-read guide to Twitter.

For an even quicker overview of Twitter, check out the CommonCraft video below here.

Recently people have been talking about http://www.plurk.com/ - Plurk seems to be similar to Twitter, only more graphical in that it shows posts on a timeline, with categories for each post designed to show a posts intention or mood in greater clarity. One to watch for now - if anyone has tried it please let me know.