Long Nguyen

What can you do with Twitter?

I am writing this for friends as well as all the people who have asked me why I use Twitter and why they should or shouldn’t.

Three years ago, Twitter was born. The website asked people “What are you doing?” The audience at the time were mostly tech-savvy people who just used the service to communicate.

Over the past few months, companies have started to use Twitter as a tool to get closer to their customers. Even celebrities such as Kanye West, Jon Favreau, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Kawasaki, Al Gore, David Suzuki and Oprah Winfrey are “twittering”. Everybody has decided to turn into a geek or geekette. Those people and companies are all big shots, so how can Twitter benefit us, the little people?

If you are using Facebook and you comment on people’s statuses, videos, photos, etc, then you should find that Twitter is no different. Only the interface is different. Facebook lives by its interface while Twitter doesn’t need that. If you have a device or software in which you can type 140 characters, then you can use Twitter.

These are only a few things that can make Twitter useful.

• Spread opinions – Twitter is useless/useful. Facebook’s new design rules/sucks. I hate Internet Explorer!
• Notify people – Your baby was just born and you’re so happy, so spread the joy. Or a bridge just collapse, let people know, so that they don’t take that route or perhaps someone they know is involved.
• Read the news – Media companies have joined Twitter and they tweet headlines and link to full articles. Twitter lets the news come to you so you never have to pick up a news paper or regularly visit news websites.
• Make new friends – Many people on Twitter have common interest to yours and some of them have information that can help you, the kind of information that your real life friends don’t have.
• Create a network
• Receive traffic/accident warnings – In Montreal, the metro isn’t very reliable. There are moments when I save time because I got alerted that the metro was down. It allowed to seek alternative routes without even wasting the time to find out on my own.
• Receive customer service – You bought a computer with Windows and something weird just happened. Believe me, random people on Twitter are way more helpful than customer service representatives.
• Become more social – Twitter is a social network, you are allowed to joke around with people.
• Find or post a job – I’ve had a few freelance web design contracts through Twitter.
• Find feedback/Get reviews/Get advice on any topic – You can ask anything from “Should I dump him/her?” or “Which movie do you recommend?”
• Search like you would on Google - http://search.twitter.com – There are many interesting, up-to-date content on the web that even Google doesn’t put on the first page of search results.

Twitter is a communication tool and it should be used as such.

Update 2010/01/14: Wyclef Jean’s Haiti Relief Tweets Raise $1 Million

Update 2010/01/21: What Has Twitter Done For Me?