why did i join twitter? i joined twitter after watching an episode of Diggnation – April 18, 2008 -  Episode 146 – Our Lip Dub is Better Than Yours. it was the first story about  “A Berkeley student got arrested in Egypt and let his friends know by using twitter. It might be the first important use of twitter ever.” video here and digg story here. after that, i signed up for twitter. in case i got in trouble (*knock on wood*), twitter is my one phone (or sms) away from help.

how does this work?

first, sign up at twitter.com

post what are you are doing… like a status message in your instant messenger or in your social network like facebook but its public. the perfect description is a mini blog. a post in twitter is a “tweet” like birds chirping….

are you thinking of a friend list? again, this is not your myspace/friendster/facebook. what you have here is “following” and “followers”. “following” – you can follow anyone in twitter, a friend, a celebrity, a company, or a complete stranger, and know their tweets. “followers” – those who subscribe to your own tweets.

now an example of a message below

@agigi its afternoon jess!
1:49 PM Apr 19th from twhirl in reply to agigi

1. @agigi directly refers to the twitter user agigi
2. putting @agigi in front of your tweet means its a message to @agigi
3. “from twhirl” indicates what was used to tweet. in this case, the program twhirl. if you post directly from twitter.com, it will say “from web”
4. “in reply to agigi” is a direct link for the reply of “@agigi its afternoon jess!”

RT @kevinrose: ok, my mom is now proud :) Digg mentioned on Oprah thanks to @aplusk! – http://tinyurl.com/daopw5

9:44 AM Apr 18th from twhirl

1. when forwarding a message use RT or Retweet to give credit to the twitter user
2. further explained at Kevin Rose’s blog – What is RT (retweeting)?
   

tools i use to twitter

1. twhirl – an adobe air app for mac and windows
2. TwitterFon – my iPhone app. i love the “Search – within 500 miles” tweets
3. TwitterFox – i use this at the office because its a firefox extention
4. Ping.fm – this is to update multiple sites, not just twitter, and you can use your IM to send here (but i dont use this anymore)
5. Qik for the iPhone from the jailbroken apps – to stream videos live from the iphone and tweets it to your account.
6. txt – if one cannot resist, you can tweet via sms (set it in Settings >Devices)
7. web – twitter.com to read more and crawl to other users.

notable people to follow

1. http://twitter.com/hikbi – me!
2. http://twitter.com/kevinrose – my tech idol/ techtv dark tipper/ co-founder digg and revision3
3. http://twitter.com/digg_2000 – top stories reaching 2000 diggs
4. http://twitter.com/Veronica – my tech crush
5. http://twitter.com/TUAW – apple stuffs
6. http://twitter.com/cnnbrk – CNN
7. http://twitter.com/abscbn_news – ABS-CBN News
8. http://twitter.com/gmanews_tv – GMA News
9. http://twitter.com/THE_REAL_SHAQ – the big aristotle of twitter shaq
10. http://twitter.com/mrskutcher – Demi Moore
11. http://twitter.com/aplusk – Ashton Kutcher beats CNN’s twitter
12. http://twitter.com/sashagrey – yes, the pr0n star
13. http://twitter.com/donttrythis – Adam Savage of MythBusters
14. http://twitter.com/grantimahara – Grant Imahara of MythBusters
15. see more that i follow here

you can also update your facebook account by installing the twitter app in facebook. this is not to replace facebook or add to your list of social networking site. again, twitter is a micro-blogging system. a status update about yourself in one short statement. dont be skeptical if you haven’t tried it yet. so there, follow me at twitter.com/hikbi