What’s Twitter?

Posted on: Friday November 6, 2009
Posted in: In The Know

If you haven’t heard someone mention it, you’re now seeing an option to view Tweets Around Town throughout Fairfield County on both AllAboutDarien.com and AllAboutFaifieldCounty.com … so what IS this Twitter thing?

Twitter is officially considered a “micro-blogging” application, i.e. a condensed and concise summary of what one might have otherwise included on a blog. Originally, I think the idea was to duplicate what so many of us now know as the Facebook “status update….” but, especially around here, I have seen Twitter being used as a place to share news and information and links and announcements of interest with others who share our interests, whether we know them personally or not.

What I have found during the past few months of using Twitter myself is that there are a group of local businesses and residents who are actively exchanging information about life and opportunities in our community that are incredibly valuable, and that I couldn’t possibly hope to capture myself, all in one place…. so, because I have created this “good-to-know guide” platform, I thought I would use a portion of it to broadcast this information exchange to you, whether you, yourself, “tweet” or not.

That having been said, since you do not have to use Twitter to view these updates, please make sure to visit regularly so you can see the latest updates from participating businesses — and I’d love your feedback on this whole process if you’d care to share.

Meanwhile, because Twitter updates can only be 140 characters or less, there is a whole different vocabulary to know in order to make the most of reading tweets: here are the basics, below:

Quick Twitter Tutorial:

* Tweets cannot be longer than 140 characters, which is why they seem extremely abbreviated and/or cryptic.

* Everyone’s Twitter identity is preceeded by the @ symbol, so when other tweeple are being mentioned or their tweets are being promoted (RT or re-Tweet) you will see the @ symbol and their Twitter username.

* RT@username means that the Tweeter is “forwarding” a tweet from someone else, and that is how they reference who the tweet came from originally.

*You can visit the Twitter homepage of any of the tweeters below by clicking their username/identity.

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