Ok, so I’m far from being the first to discover the awesomeness of Twitter, (my profile here) but hopefully I won’t be the last. Last week I finally bit the bullet and signed up on one of the most talked about sites in a long time. At first I was admittedly clueless. Twitter boasts itself at giving real time updates as to what you are currently doing. OK, I guess, but who would want to read the real time updates of my life? Why would everyone want to know when I go to the bathroom or visit my mom? The truth is no one would want to hear about that kind of crap. However, if you are able to find a Twitter voice and realize how best to use the medium it can be quite addicting.

1) MicroBlogging On Twitter you are allowed to only post in 140 character increments. This means no long rambling posts, no lists, no in depth tech articles. Just short and poignant thoughts, comments and updates that are surprisingly rewarding to post. In the months that I let Zerosign.net languish in the sea of the blogoshpere (ugh, did I just use that word?) I was often tempted to come on and post some neat thought I had or an interesting quote I just heard. However, by the time I worked the will to sign in to my blog and get to writing I had either forgotten what I was going to say or realized that a two line post wouldn’t really fit the content of this site (see previous post). However, on Twitter I am free to be as random, as fruitless, as sophomoric as I want. Plus with the low prep time needed to write a post I am much more likely to keep Twitter updated than a blog in the traditional sense.

2) Followers With Twitter it is easy to follow a number of microblogs at a time. You find a friend and click “follow” beneath their name. Once you are a follower of a user, you are basically subscribed to their posts - similar to using RSS feeds to subscribe to a traditional blog. Furthermore, all of the updates of the people you are following will be displayed in your home page. Basically, Twitter gives you a super convenient way to subscribe to a number of microblogs and shows you the updates in real time on your personal dashboard.

3) Connected Lastly, because of the quick paced nature of Twitter, and the rhythm that most users update, it sometimes feels like a chat room. Thoughts are quickly posted and replied to in real time. In my mind, this moves the site into multi function abilities. Many people I know use the site much more for communication than they do for microblogging. Plus there are several third party apps that allow you to use Twitter as an IM client for just such a reason.

If you are like me and were decidedly slow to come around to Twitter, don’t feel bad. Just be sure to follow my Twitter profile and all will be well.