True To Form as a "Late Adopter," I Finally Joined Twitter: My Education and Thoughts

I joined Twitter Yesterday, and after finally taking the plunge I'm very glad I did.  

I put it off for so long because I didn't think it would be useful for me; I thought it's just a bunch of people posting inane updates that no one cares about.  Wrong.  Oh, there are plenty of people using it to keep others updated on the minutiae of their daily lives, but there are also many people using it as a powerful networking and information tool.

If you're not familiar with the workings, I'll give you the basics as I, a quick-study novice, understand them.

Twitter is what's known as a Microblogging service.  Once you set up an account and make your profile over the way you like it, you're ready to start finding people and letting them find you.  Aside from the folks whom you know as Twitter users, you're likely to find friends and acquaintances whose presence on the site surprises you.

Using Twitter's simple search tool, you should be able to find the people you want to connect to by their full name or Twitter username.  If that doesn't yield the desired results, you might send emails to folks you know, inviting them to connect to you.  

When you connect to someone on Twitter, it's called Following, and it's a 50/50 decision.  That means when you click to follow someone, they have the option of following you back or blocking you.  Following someone allows you to receive their updates on your Twitter home page.

Every update you post (limited to 140 characters) is called a Tweet, and the action of posting is referred to as Tweeting, though I've heard others call it Twittering.  There's a special kind of tweet known as @reply which allows you to publicly reply to someone's tweet.  This is done by beginning your reply tweet with @username, of course using the person's real username. 

There's also a direct messaging feature on Twitter which is only a two-way communication between people who are following each other; other than that it's one-way in the direction of the follower (meaning a follower cannot reply via direct message unless you follow them too).

Though I've only been with Twitter for a day, I'd like to give a little advice.  If you want to use it just to keep up with friends, follow celebrity gossip or popular current events, go crazy, follow as many people as you want.  If you want to use it as more of a business or semi/professional networking tool, use common sense when deciding who to follow, who to follow back, and who to block.  Twitter is not devoid of spam, and the more caution you use with your networking (even if it is just social) the better off and less annoyed you'll be.

By the way, you can follow me at twitter.com/jdsheline.