mboy12: Waiting for the bus. 12 minutes ago from txt

No kidding – this is an actual tweet (a message on Twitter). It begs the questions, “who is mboy12?” and more importantly, “who cares?”

When you’re racing to get the washing out, the dog fed and the kids to school without missing your own bus to work, it might also raise the question “why would anyone bother to Twitter?”

The answer to why the world is in a twitter about Twitter turns out to be much longer than the 140 characters this free social networking and micro-blogging service allows users in each tweet.

People tend to love or hate Twitter, and the devotees do so for different reasons.

Barack Obama famously Twittered during his US presidential campaign to encourage more people to vote, to give them real-time updates of his progress on the campaign trail and to supply quick links to live footage of his election rallies.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd also tweets to let Australians know where he is and what he is doing – which is more likely to include “Heading off to have dinner with World Bank President” than “waiting for a bus”. But if you’re not a world leader, what on earth could you have to say that’s that interesting?

As it turns out there’s a lot of good stuff on Twitter and in the spirit of giving snappy answers here are a few:

• Twitter creates a sense of community.

American IT journalist Carolyn Jabs says it’s hard to understand the feelings of  “connectedness” unless you’ve given Twitter a go. She says: “For people who are working or parenting at home, the ebb and flow of tweets is like what used to happen in the village square, around the water cooler or over the back fence. Knowing tiny details about the lives of other people can transform strangers into acquaintances and even friends.”    

• News spreads fast on Twitter.

During the Victorian bushfires earlier this year, Twitter became a hub of news updates, first-hand experiences and offers of help, Because tweets can be sent from mobile phones, Twitter was the most convenient way for many people to reach their “community”.

• Instant access to experts.

When you “follow” someone on Twitter (as simple as clicking on a box) you receive all their tweets. More and more experts from really diverse areas of life are online, on Twitter. They often answer their followers’ quick questions, with equally quick replies, or give you a link to a handy website.

• People add links to interesting sites you’d never find otherwise.

This is especially true of finding interesting blogs – like this one called Imagination in parenting.

• You can quickly post things you want to remember.

Carolyn Jabs says that more and more parents (in the US at least) are using Twitter as a form of family diary. “Some parents use Twitter to record the fly-by details of family life,” she says. “After a while they have a searchable diary of the cute (and maybe not-so-cute) things their kids said and did.” 

Visit twitter.com and join up. It’s that easy and it’s free. Twitter will offer to check your email address book to see if any of your contacts already have Twitter accounts. You can also search for interesting famous people or search by topics through Twitter Search.

There are also a lot of twitter-related sites and applications, such as:

twittervision.com - a world map which shows random tweets in real-time, by location.

tweetdeck.com - helps you organise and stay on top of your groups’ tweets.

grouptweet.com - allows you to send messages via Twitter that are instantly broadcast privately to specified members of a group.

tinyurl.com - Tiny url converts a long url to a twitter-friendly, shorter one so that you can make the most out of the 140 available characters.

Like anything you do online (or even in the real world) it’s unwise to give away too much information to people you don’t know.  A little common sense and a healthy curiosity is all you need to explore the world of Twitter and decide if it has a place in your life. Those who love it say it’s surprisingly addictive.