I’ve already done one post on Twitter, but with the new facebook update and a rash of new friends who are into Twitter, it’s been on my mind lately.  I’ve thought of a few more things that would be helpful to someone who’s new to twitter, someone who isn’t new but wants to learn how to use it better, or someone who’s seeing twitter posts from afar (as in through a facebook feed).

I’m going to start out by defining a few terms you may see on Twitter.

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If you don’t already know, I am really into Twitter.  Notice the bar currently on the left full of random comments, that’s my recent Twitter activity.  One of the questions I get the most is quite simple: “What is Twitter?”  Now there’s tons of information out there on Twitter, and a lot of it is various attempts to explain the phenomena, but since I have a feeling a lot of my readers (or future readers at this point) are not as web savvy as some others, I’ve decided to do an article explaining what Twitter is, how it can be used, what it can be used for, and who’s using it now.

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.

I held off writing my first real post for quite a while.  For some reason it felt like it had to be something big, or more quality than anything else that will appear later on the blog.  When it came down to it I’ve been too busy to start doing any of the truly creative work quite yet, but I’d like to get something up here.  And then I realized, perhaps while writing the “about” section, which you’ll find a link to above, that while I know what I want to do with this site, anyone who’s reading this might not.  So I’m going to use this blog post to really set out my goals for this website, and what purpose it’s supposed to serve.

1. This is my webpage, so it’s a central location for all things… me.  It may seem pretty basic, but I really wanted a central place to have links to everywhere on the internet that has any connection to me (that I can think of).  Mostly this means linking to my social networking profiles, which you will see in the right hand column of the page.  At some point I plan to add a more extensive list of links that will include explanations of what all these websites are, for the uninitiated.  This will eventually appear on the about page, but for now, if you see something and are confused, check out the “ClaimID” link on the right for a similar list.
2. I want to make myself accountable for putting out some creative writing every week.  I often find that pressure to write something really good keeps me from starting at all, so I’ve created a place where I can just throw work out into the world and forget about it, and this is it.  Additionally, because other people are looking, hopefully I will feel some sort of obligation to get work out on a regular basis.  Inspired by Paul Dini’s “200 Words” column on iFanboy.com, I’ve tentatively decided that writing 200 words once a week is a good starting point, so expect to see pieces around that size soon.
3. I’m a film student, so in turn, I have made films.  A lot of people ask me to post them on YouTube, but I’m just not a fan of it’s cluttered format and low quality.  I would like to share my films with those who can’t go to a screening, so soon I will have my reel posted on this site.  Similarly, I’d like to get some of my art photography up here as well.
4. This site should serve as a marketing tool both for myself as someone who works in the film inustry, but also as a freelance photographer/videographer.  This is why my resume appears in the links above, and if a business for photography/videography ever begins to build up, you’ll probably start to see more information on that somewhere on this website as well.
5. It’s been a while since I had a blog, and it would be nice to have someplace to go when I feel a rant coming on, or if I have something to say that doesn’t fit in a twitter post. (By the way, if you don’t follow me on Twitter, you should note that I’m extremely active on it, and it’s one of the better ways to get to know things about me.  The link to my account is on the right).

There’s more details to be worked out of course, I’d like to come up with some sort of schedule for posts.  Perhaps 200 words on Mondays and blog posts on Thursdays?  Don’t hold me to that quite yet.  And obviously nothing real has really been posted quite yet.  Hopefully that will change soon.  Until then, “Good night, and good luck”.