What Twitter is can be difficult to explain, if only because it manages to be many things at once.  Simply put: Twitter is a social network in which it’s users post updates limited to 140 characters, often referred to as tweets.  Twitter’s own explanation says that you are supposed to use these tweets to answer the question: “What are you doing?”  Anyone who knows the link to your twitter profile can view these tweets (unless you decide to make them private), and any Twitter user who decides to follow you will be able to see all of your updates on their main feed with the rest of their friends’ updates.  Similarly, you can build up a similar list of users whose posts you are interested in, so that you can keep track of all these tweets.  The original idea was to provide a way for friends who don’t always get to be around you to still get a better idea of what your life is like, what your interests are, and otherwise learn new things about you.  The whole twitter phenomena has also been referred to as “micro-blogging”, due to it being a less involving, lower commitment version of having a blog (web log, an online journal, column, or diary).  Tweets can also be compared easily to facebook’s status updates, as they are very similar.  In terms of content though, you can pretty much post anything you want: what you are doing, random thoughts, messages to your followers, etc.  It’s essentially a massive publishing platform with which you can quickly reach a lot of people.  Because of this, users have come up with a way of responding to each other, through the use of the @ sign.  Any time someone says something that you’d like to comment on, you can simply make a new tweet of your own, and start it with @ followed by their username.  So if you wanted to respond to me, you might tweet “@jamesgoux I really dug last night’s episode.”

So how do you use it?  It’s easy to set up an account at Twitter.  Once you’ve done so and set up your profile, you can start tweeting.  Post whatever you like.  If you know other people who use twitter you can easily search for them and begin following them.  My user name is jamesgoux.  As you continue to use Twitter, you’ll learn that there’s many ways to access your feed of friends, and also to update your own.  You can go to twitter.com every time if you like, or you can access it using  one of various programs.  Personally, when I’m on my computer, I use Digsby, which not only gives me full access to Twitter, but also several other social networks, and numerous instant messaging clients as well.  There are other Twitter specific programs such as Twhirl, I’m sure they are better designed for the specificities of Twitter.  But there’s one way to access Twitter that makes truly changes the face of the network itself, and really revolutionizes social networking as a whole, and that’s through your phone.  Through the Twitter website, you can set up your phone to receive standard SMS texts from Twitter.  You can choose which users you’d like to receive text updates from and which you don’t, and you can also send a text to a specific number and have it automatically update your Twitter account.  When this number is stored in your phone contact list, it makes it pretty easy to drop your thoughts on the go, or respond to someone else while away from the computer.  Additionally, if you have any sort of smart phone, such as the iPhone or a Blackberry, there is probably an application specifically designed to make it easy to go through the entirety of your Twitter feed, and make updates all from your phone.  Most of these applications and desktop programs offer additional features such as the ability to attach a link to an image, or even use GPS to tag the location where your post was made.  My most common strategy for staying up to date on Twitter is to receive SMS text updates from my close friends’ accounts, and keep track of the rest of the people I follow through an iPhone application called Twinkle.  I like Twinkle because when I post it allows me to attach a location, post a picture from my phone, helps me keep track of how many characters I have left in a tweet, and allows me to see tweets that were made in a surrounding radius from where I am at the moment.  Twinkle itself has sort of become a network in itself for any given location, and I often see people chatting in the nearby area.  Finally, you can often tie your twitter account to various other social networks.  I have mine set up so that every time I tweet, it changes my facebook status accordingly (unless it’s an @ response).  Those of you who’ve noticed that I update my facebook status constantly will now understand why that is.

Twitter can also serve as a sort of mass communication tool.  Once you and a number of your friends have set up mobile updates, you can send out messages such as “Anyone want to see a movie tonight?” and all of your friends will see this and have an opportunity to respond.  It’s a good way to get a message out to a lot of people you know, without having to send something multiple times or hunt through a large address book.  And even if it’s not important, you could still have something to say that you want everyone to hear as soon as possible.

So who’s using Twitter?  A little bit of everyone.  Like all internet phenomons, the tech savvy tend to get to it first, but Twitter is rapidly spreading in popularity.  Users from around the world and all kinds of people are using it.  In addition, a lot of websites use twitter as a feed to keep you updated on changes and posts to their site.  Even famous news networks such as CNN have begun to take this approach.  While these user accounts aren’t as personal as some of the others, they can provide you with useful information and become a good source of news as well.  There’s also a lot of celebrities on Twitter these days.  Everyone from J.J. Abrams to Barack Obama to Britney Spears to M.C. Hammer has jumped on the band wagon, and if someone is famous in the tech world, they almost certainly have an account.  I also see various sub-communities start to pop-up within Twitter.  People who have common interests will often friend each other and the cross conversations that arise from this can be quite fascinating.  I myself am very interested in comics, and have found that almost every comic writer/creator who I read has a Twitter account.  Not only that, but this particular brand of user is extremely active.  Not only do you get to know more about the lives of these writers, but you sometimes get a rare glimpse into their writing process.  As someone who’s goal has always been to be a writer, and who has a passion for the process of making art in its various forms, this can be a useful and fascinating way to learn a bit more.  Other prominent communities that I’ve noticed and follow would be the podcasters (people who host radio shows for free on the internet), and the webcomic artists.  If you have a different interest, chances are there is someone of note on Twitter, or at least someone who shares your interest.  And if not, then Twitter needs you to add that interest to its community.

Another fascinating development recently is that Twitter has become a sort of news network in itself.  Because of the ease of posting, some news breaks on Twitter before it does anywhere else.  When Southern California had an earthquake recently, many twitter users beat the news stations to the punch declaring the event, what happened to them, and if they are safe.  News travels fast along the twitter route, as people often retweet things that they find of note.

And that’s about it.  The main thing is to just sign up, find a few friends, and start tweeting.  While it’s uses are complex, it’s probably the simplest and easy to use social network out there because it strips everything but these little updates away.  So go to Twitter and sign up, and make sure to follow me, @jamesgoux.