Officially defined by Twitter itself as a social networking and microblogging service utilising instant messaging, SMS or a web interface, that enables users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.
What is Twitter?
You attempt to answer the question, “What are you doing?” The short format of the tweet defines Twitter allowing informal collaboration and quick information sharing that provides a relief from lengthy email and continuous IM. Twittering allows you to share information with people that you wouldn’t normally exchange email or IM messages with, opening up your circle of contacts to an ever-growing community of like-minded people. You can send messages using Twitter’s website, as a single SMS alert, mobile apps (on Android, iPhone, Blackberry, etc.) or via a third-party applications. Your tweets are displayed on your profile page, on the home page of each of your followers, and in Twitter’s public timeline (unless you disable this in your account settings.)
How to Use Twitter?
Twitter has many uses for both personal and business use. It offers a great way to keep in touch with friends and quickly broadcast information about where you are and what you’re up to. For example, “I’m downtown and aching for some sushi. Anyone like to join me?” For business, Twitter can be used to broadcast your company’s latest news and blog posts, interact with your customers, or to enable easy internal collaboration and group communication. When you send a message with @username at the beginning, it’s understood that your message is intended for that specific user, but all your followers can still see the tweet. To send private tweets, Twitter also offers the Direct Message which is privy only to the sender and the recipient.