Everyone should know twitter by now but for those who don’t: Twitter is a social-network micro blogging service where you answer to the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters.

Introduction to twitter. Why do people twitter?

The bottom line is to let people know what you’re doing. By telling your friends the little things about you, you can get to know each other better. It might not seem that important what tv-show someone is watching, but it does tell a lot about you.

But twitter is more than that. Twitter is also about connecting with great people. You can meet a lot of interesting people on twitter and expend your social network. A lot of people use twitter for self promotion to. Note that just spamming people with your own blog articles won’t always be appreciated. You have to add value to your other tweets to.

Twitter keeps you up to date! Tweets are much faster than blogposts. People hear or read some news and immediately tweet it. There is also a lot of live tweeting from conferences, so it really keeps you up to date.

The twitter community is a helping community. If you ask a question you almost instantly get tips and answers. Just yesterday I said something was annoying me and @BenjaminCarlier and @mennos provided me the solution. Sometimes people set up a quick tweetpoll, for instance: “What camera should I buy? X or Y?”. You even help without knowing. When I say I’m in a traffic jam because of an accident, people who read it can avoid that place. Connecting to like-minded people can add value to your (web-) life: it can bring you in contact with awesome people, give you inspiration and I can say twitter has taught me a lot.

How to twitter?

1) Create your twitter account

Go to twitter.com and click join. Yes, it’s free. Fill in a username. That can be a nickname. Choose a username that you use on you other social networks so that friends can find you easy (and nobody can pretend to be you). Do the same with your avatar. Keep in mind that when people scan tweets (twitter messages) or check their friends following list, they usually look at the avatar more than they read the username.

Next, pimp your profile, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Don’t forget to fill in your website and bio.

2) Start following people

There are several ways to find your friends on twitter. Click the “Find & Follow” to search your address book. You can search by name or location in the search bar on top of the page. Checking the friends of your friend can also lead you to people you know.

Besides the build in feature, there are lots of other ways to find interesting people.

• Twitterlocal lets you filter out tweets from a certain area. (for instance Within 10 mile of your hometown). You can subscribe to the RSSfeed of those tweets but I use it to find interesting people who live in my area.
• Twitdir gives you the top 100 twitterers divided in categories: Top 100 followed, Top 100 updaters, Top 100 favouriters, Top 100 followers.
• Twubble is a great service that searches your friend graph and picks out people who you may like to follow.

3) Find your way of tweeting.

Sure you can tweet via twitter.com/home. But there are a lot of other ways.

TXT

Twitter allows you to update via sms. That costs you the price of a regular text message. Mind that it depends on where you live. If you live in Belgium like I do, you pay 50 eurocent because you send an international sms. Twitter also sends updates from your friends to your mobile phone. This is free but limited to 250 sms/week. More info on twitter.com/devices.

You can update via your mobile phone on m.twitter.com or u can use one of the many applications for your phone (Twixr for Nokia phones, PocketTweets for iPhone,…).

IM

You can send and receive messages straight to your chat application (for instance Google Talk).If you use Windows Live Messenger or ICQ, you should use TwitterIm.

Mail

Twittermail is the best way to send updates via email. They provide you with a secret email address. If you send an email to that address, it will be posted on twitter.

Desktop Applications

Lots of people develop a desktop application for twitter. There are way to many, there sure is one you like. The most popular ones are:

• Twitterific (considered the best Mac OSX twitter client)
• Twhirl (cross-platform multi-account client based on AIR and Flex)
• Snitter (cross-platforum client based on AIR and Flex, includes different themes, check out the great wood theme)
• Spaz (cross-platform AIR client with ability to skin via CSS)
• Tweetr (cross-platform AIR client, allows you to send files and webcam snapshots)and many more.

Other ways

You can also use the Firefox addons, WordPress plugins, Facebook applications,… Feel free to comment your favorite way of updating twitter.

4) Start updating

Not much to say here. Just start using twitter. It might be useful to read the twitter etiquette.

Get more out of twitter

1) Searches, stats, clouds and other visualizations

• TweetStats: Graphs your twitter stats, including tweets per hour, tweets per month, tweet timeline, replies, used interface and tweet cloud.
• Tweeterboard: looks at who is influential on twitter, based on the conversations with other users. Also a list of most popular links.
• Summize: Real-time search engine, allows you to search by user, tweets to user, tags, language and more.
• TweetScan: realtime search engine for Twitter posts, you can search by keywords, user or both.
• Twitterverse: generates a tweet cloud of the public timeline so you can see what’s hot today.
• Twitterholic: stats off all the twitter users. Top 100 users + check your own stats (if you’re in their database)
• Tweet 140: tracks the length of your tweets (when they follow you). The closer to 140 characters, the better your score.
• Tweetvolume: lets you compare the use of words. For instance: Apple vs Microsoft vs Leopard vs Vista
• Twitter Browser: lets you visualize your twitter network and friends and how everyone is linked.

2) Some useful stuff

• Twittercal: Send direct messages to twittercal with your appointments and it will appear in your google calender.
• Remember The Milk for Twitter: Add tasks to Remember the milk by DM.

Try it. If you think you can check out what twitter is all about by scanning to the public timeline, you’re wrong. As @remarkablogger said: “Twitter is like sex. You can read all the stuff about sex all you want, but if you’ve never had it, you simply have no idea what it’s like” So go on and create that twitter account! Be sure to follow ikkekietje!

Me and twitter:

I was the 9,231,322th person to sign up for twitter!

At the moment I am following 136 people and have 127 followers.

I have 1419 tweets

Cool tweets

• “The unmicroblogged life is not worth living” by @walter
• “The next generation of Web users may find what they want by using their social network rather than a search algorithm” by @yizmo
• “I think we need to take a follow break until your Twittering gets under control.” by @someecards
• ” ‘I stopped twittering’ is the new ‘I choose to not have a tele at home’ ” by @netlash
• “Repeat this with me: Twitter is not a service, it’s a career. Within 10 years, the internet is controlled by Twitter. ;-)” by @netlash
• “Has a not-so-secret-anymore crush on the @Twitteriffic bird.” by @haveamint
• “Millions of kisses: free. * 788 followers: 788.000.000 kisses. Replying to Twitter thinking you’re texting your girlfriend: priceless.” by @aral
• “Twitter usernames are the new domain names.” by @netlash
• “Quoting someone on Twitter is the new credibility” by @robinwauters
• “OMG! First Marriage twitter proposal??! http://snurl.com/228d9 -> http://snurl.com/228dc by @Marko
• “@Triona totally, main reason I went for mac was because of twitterific to be honest and this is where I learned about @macheist” by @burkie
• “Twitter haters are the new blog haters and the new “zine haters are the new mixtape haters.” by @netlash
• “Now that I think about it: Twitter became the biggest ‘little blog’… And unlike ‘ordinary blogs’ someone is somehow connected to ‘everyone’ ” by @babyC

More:

• Twitter.com
• Twitter in plain English
• Twitter fan wiki page
• Twitterfacts
• eHow
• ohTwitter
• Twitterpipes.yahoo
• tweet sheet of mobile and IM commands by Jason Theodor
• My twitter bookmarks
• How can we use Twitter for business?
• Twitter has changed my life
• Twitter “Do you follow me” widget for WordPress