As a tech columnist, I’m supposed to be on top of what’s new in tech, but there’s just too much, too fast; it’s like drinking from a fire hose. I can only imagine how hopeless a task it must be for everyone else.
Which brings us to Twitter.
Twitter.com is all the rage among geeks, although it has more hype than users at this point. (When I speak at tech and education conferences, I routinely ask my audience how many are on Twitter. Usually, it’s 1 in 500.)
Basically, you sign up for a free account at Twitter.com. Then you’re supposed to return to that site periodically and type short messages that announce what you’re doing. (Very short — 140 characters max.)
Then, you’re supposed to persuade your friends and admirers to become your audience by subscribing to your utterances (called tweets). Big-name tech pundits amass tens of thousands of followers. Normal people may have five or six.
I’ll admit that, for the longest time, I was exasperated by the Twitter hype. Like the world needs ANOTHER ego-massaging, social-networking time drain? Between e-mail and blogs and Web sites and Facebook and chat and text messages, who on earth has the bandwidth to keep interrupting the day to visit a Web site and type in, “I’m now having lunch”? And to read the same stuff being broadcast by a hundred other people?
Then my eyes were opened. A few months ago, I was one of 12 judges for a MacArthur grant program in Chicago. As we looked over one particular application, someone asked, “Hasn’t this project been tried before?”
Everyone looked blankly at each other.
Then the guy sitting next to me typed into the Twitter box. He posed the question to his followers. Within 30 seconds, two people replied, via Twitter, that it had been done before. And they provided links.
The fellow judge had just harnessed the wisdom of his followers in real time. No e-mail, chat, Web page, phone call or FedEx package could have achieved the same thing.
I was impressed. Read more…
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/twittering-tips-for-beginners/#more-635
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