What's There For Me In Twitter ?

Twitter can be used for umpteen reasons some of which are as follows.

Live Connection With Contacts
Twitter is a live connection between you and your friends or family members. Prizes won, missing a safety pin, current song on your iPod, crossed stages in your video game or need of cash, any thing can be instant communicated through Twitter.

Social Reforms And Activities

You can raise your voice against any social injustice or create social awareness like #SavePlanet, #GreenEarth, #EnergyConservation etc. Political campaigns (#Obama), for a Presidential candidate, reasons to support or not can also be carried out. You noted the #hash before some of the above words. Want to know more then read this - Tracking Twitter Keywords: The Key To Success on Twitter.

Business Or Product Promotion
The most common use of Twitter today is the promotion of business , site, blog, product or service. Without this ability the growth of Twitter wouldn't have been till this extent. Majority of the Tweets now carry a URL which points to the blog or site introducing a product or a service. If you also intend to have any of these benefits, you have enough reasons to join Twitter.

Ramifications Of Basic Usage
The popularity of Twitter and the availability of API has led to the development of zillion apps and sites to increase the usability. For instance, sharing files , sharing Google Docs, managing personal finance, fitness management, travel management and much more can be done using these third party applications or sites.

What Is Twitter ?

Introduction

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay in touch, through small SMS type updates. The updates are an answer to a simple question, "What are you doing".Each message is 140 characters in length. It is also known as microblogging.
In order to use Twitter you should either have a computer or a mobile phone, along with an internet connection.

History

Twitter was crated in 2006 by Jack Dorsey,and is a privately funded startup with offices in the SoMA neighborhood of San Francisco, CA.  
Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide. Companies backing
Twitter are Union Square Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital, and Bezos Expeditions (led by Jeff Bezos of Amazon).

How To Use Twitter

Crate an account on Twitter. Login and see the box " What are you doing". Write in the box and click on the Update button. Start sending messages, which are lovingly called tweets on Twitter.

References:
Photo Jack Dorsey from Creative Commons.Original Link to Photo By Joi.
Twitter About Page and  Wikipedia

How To Share Google Docs on Twitter

In my previous post I discussed about sharing files on Twitter through third party sites. Here we will see how to share Google Docs on Twitter.

You Need

1. Google Docs
   
2. Bit.ly
3. Twitter

Create the required document on Google Docs. Publish it as web page. Google will give you a URL of the published document. Copy the URL and Shorten it with Bit.ly ( Sample link to try http://bit.ly/4df8Hf ).  A smarter thing to do is get the Bit.ly Button, as it makes the task Much easier.
Copy the shortened URL. Open Twitter and paste. There you go ! If you have an account on Bit.ly linked to Twitter the you can post it from Bit.ly without leaving the page.

TIP:

How to share MS Office (.doc, .docx, .ppt, .pps, .xls, .xlsx ),or OpenOffice.org (.odt) StarOffice (.sxw) and RTF format document ?
Just upload the MS Word, OpenOffice.org, StarOffice or RTF document on Google Docs. Publish it, get the link, and follow the same procedure as described above.

Read More Twitter Related Articles Here .
Meet me on @Twitter,  Jaiku and Plurk too.

How To Insert Emoticons Or Smileys in Twitter

Make the most of 140 characters, Express yourself.
Tweemoticons offer numerous creative, useful and conversation enhancing emoticons.
Install Greasemonkey add-on in Firefox web browser.
After this install a simple script from Tweemoticons.
Now login into Twitter.
Start sending tweets on twitter and have fun with Tweemoticons ;)
You can follow @Tweemoticons on Twitter.
Read More Twitter Related Articles Here .

Tracking Twitter Keywords: The Key To Success on Twitter

Why Track Keywords ?
If you are chatting on Yahoo! on a certain topic you need to join a chat room. The reason is that you want to share a thought related to that particular topic. Twitter doesn't have rooms but they have enough room for thoughts related to a certain topic and that is possible by a keyword or a #hashtag. When you search for a hashtag all the tweets mentioning it will appear. Similarly if you want to put a product or a site related to a certain words and want others attention in search results, you have to use the key words.

How To Track Keywords ?
Twitter by default shows the 10 most trending topics on your homepage itself but if you need more then you can try these sites.
Twitscoop shows keyword tag clouds that change size in real time.In the Hot Trends section it shows graphs of trending tpoics in hours as well.
Another strength of Twitscoop is that you can also see the number of clicks on bit.ly urls in the tweets itself. And if the tweet contains photos posted on Twitpic it is visible right there by hovering the mouse over view button .


Monitter is real-time tracking site with a facility to view 3 different keywords on a single page. By default they show the Twitter Trending Topics but you can charge all the three engines by substituting your own keywords and watch all of them together.



To get hourly updates by email on the selected keywords you can try Tweetbeep.

Another site for email updates is Tweet Scan.

Twitter: Share Any File On Twitter For Free

Are you interested in sharing a file with all your followers on Twitter ? Or may be to any one friend or family member - then read on.

The Sites For File Sharing

1. File Social
2. TwitDoc
3. FileTwt
4. Tweet Cube

File Social

File Social is the one I liked the most among the sites I checked. The reason being ease and ergonomics. You can upload max 50 mb. To share your files now visit File Social Here. No need of separate account. Just login with Twitter id.


Files Supported By File Social
Images, compressed files, videos, music, etc. In other words, file extensions like pdf, jpg, doc, txt, zip, rar, mov, avi and mp3, amongst many others. There’s no excuse for any format!

Twit Doc

TwitDoc is another handy tool for file sharing on Twitter. One the most outstanding and helpful feature is a client that supports " Drag and Drop". File sharing could never be so easy. To share your files now visit TwitDoc Here.


Files Supported By TwitDoc
You can upload pictures (jpg, png, gif), or documents: Word (doc, docx), PowerPoint (ppt, pptx, pps), Excel (xls, xlsx), PDF, PS, Open Office (odt, odp, sxw, sxl), and text (txt, rtf).

File Twt

FileTwt has two modes of file sharing. One is public, and the other is private. If you login with Twitter account you get to share it publicly. If you need privacy for sharing only to a specified person, you need to sign up. To share your files now visit File Twt Here.



Tweet Cube

TweetCube allows you to share files on Twitter. Simple as that. Blast out your images, videos, music and more with just a couple of clicks, and your files are automatically posted on Twitter.


Did it help you do something constructive and productive ? Would you like to have more articles of this sort ?

Twitter Search I'm Feeling Twucky!

Twitter is busy twesting its new search engine. It is growing at a twerrific rate despite the fact that it twucked down in its subdomain. It acts a filter to browse through the new twending topics. As about 90% users choose to display their tweets publicly, it has earned a great sense of relevance.


It seems the RTI ( Right to Twinformation act) has gripped them quite well. No wonder its ready to for twierce competetion with Google. I'm feeling Twucky!