Twitter

I’ve been hearing a lot lately about something called Twitter, a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as "tweets", which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters which are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them. Apparently it’s the new big thing in the world of social networking on the internet. A number of celebrities, and even President Obama, are now “twittering”, according to a program I saw a few nights ago on CNN.

Tonight I decided to look up the website and try to figure out what “twittering” is all about and, while I’m still not sure I really grasp the full concept, I signed up for an account. From what I understand, this means I can now send brief messages either from the internet or my mobile phone to be posted on the internet to let everyone know what I’m doing or what I’m thinking. Although, I have to admit, I doubt anyone is really that interested in my thoughts or actions that they will really want instantaneous updates. That’s not the reason I signed up for Twitter.

I first heard about Twitter last year during the attacks in Mumbai. Apparently some of the people trapped inside the hotels used Twitter to post messages about what was happening as teh attacks were taking place. Although I certainly hope I will never be in such a situation, if something were to ever happen in all of my travels, I think it would be tremendous to be able to send a text message from my phone that would post on the internet to let everyone know I’m ok.

So I’m now “twittering”. Or at least trying to figure out how to “twitter”. One I figure it out, you can see updates in the left column of this blog under "Twitter Updates".