Embracing Web 2.0 (Part 1)

I am going to start a series on how I embrace web 2.0 technologies on a daily basis to make my life easier. Today I am going to talk to you about Twitter.



Twitter describes themselves as "Social networking and microblogging service utilising instant messaging, SMS or a web interface."

So whats this mean? basically Twitter acts very similar to your status on Facebook. What are you doing? tell Twitter and you can let everyone know instantly.


So why use twitter if you use Facebook? Twitter has many uses that the Facebook status just does not hit on. I like to use twitter for Micro-Blogging, the Facebook mini-feed makes this very difficult, there are a ton of other news feed stories that you would have to filter through... the Twitter feed will only show your "tweets"(Tweet being twitters word for status updates) and not all that other garbage. Twitter also allows you to place a badge on a blog, or a website showing what your current status is (as seen on the right side of my blog). As far as I know Facebook does not allow for this.

I still use my Facebook status because a lot more people are using Facebook rather than Twitter, so what I do is I take my tweets and I convert them into my Facebook status using a Facebook application known as TwitterSync. It is very easy to use, and all it requires is entering your Twitter username, and they handle the rest. TwitterSync does give you the option to add a prepend verb, such as "is", so your status is grammatically correct.

Now heres where it gets fun. :) I can update my twitter status from anywhere(as long as I have cell service, or internet access). I have set my account up so I can send a text message to twitter and it will change my twitter status which will change my Facebook status!! Pretty cool huh? not only that, but Google Talk allows me to send instant messages to TwitterIM which will change my Twitter status. AIM has an IM bot, but it has been down for an extended period of time, and I'm not sure if it will ever work again.

I most frequently change my Twitter status from my IGoogle page which is set to my home page. I will discuss IGoogle further in a future blog post. I change my status with an application known as BeTwittered.

Twitter like all successful web applications allows for third party applications to be build utilizing the Twitter API. This post from Mashable shows 60+ different Twitter tools that you may find useful.

Let me know how you use Twitter.

In the next part of the Embracing Web 2.0 Series I will discuss Feeds, and how incredibly useful they are.