I am on a campaign to get all my friends on Twitter and to add as many friends as possible to my Twitter list. Add me to your list here:
www.twitter.com/brianwong

When I first came to know about Twitter, I thought “who would want to use this?”. I mean it only allowed you to post 140 characters and to be honest, I just could not understand what Twitter was about. Time to eat my words.

Twitter is awesome! And I think I am addicted. Especially since I can now Twit on my iPhone. Some of you reading this post and hearing about Twitter for the first time are going to think the same thing as I did. But let me tell you to give Twitter a chance. The POWER in this Web 2.0 service is in its simplicity and also because it has an API (application programming interface) which allows other services to integrate with it. There are already hundreds of services that are now integrated with Twitter. The implications for this is enormous.

I will be putting together some information about how to use Twitter effectively over the next couple of weeks if you are new or not using it to its full potential yet. But in a nutshell, let me just give you the basics about Twitter.

Twitter is just like a very very simple version of Facebook where you connect with friends. Once connected, here’s what you can do:

1. Twitter allows you to send short messages from your computer, handphone or automatically – let say every time you update an RSS feed.
2. Twitter allows you to receive or display your short messages on virtually anywhere online including your Twitter sitebut also your Facebook page, Blog or anywhere you can paste html code.
3. Your message can include a link to a photo (using Twitpic), webpage and includes your location from where you are sending the message from.
4. You can send a message to everyone on your friend list, privately to one person or publicly but directed to one person only.

Here are some simple examples of practical applications of Twitter:

1. Say you and your friends are connected on Twitter and enabled receiving Twitter messages on your mobile phone. If you want to send a mass text message to all your friends at once, you can do it with Twitter on your phone. That’s not new. But if you wanted to include a photo you took on your phone and display where you are by location, that can be done easily with Twitter. With a data plan for your mobile phone, you can save a lot on text messages by just using this web service. If you are still using a non-3G phone, Twitter still works using the SMS system.

2. If you have all your friends linked on Twitter, there are 3-rd party applications that can automatically send Twitter reminder for say birtydays and events. You can also have Twitter messages sent when an event is triggered e.g. stock price, new blog post (I’m currently adding that to my blog). Now get this for a whacky application -there is a device you can stick into the soil of your household pot plant that sends you a Twitter message if the soil water level is low! Imagine now that your house plants can talk to you via Twitter!

3. You’re at a social event and you’re having a great time. You do a real time update on your phone saying “having a blast at this party in —–”. If one of your friends is also at the event, they will receive the Twitter message and contact you directly saying “hey, I’m here too”. And now you are connected. If you are in a crowded arena – say a concert, you can take a real time photo of where you are and Twitter it to your friend. They can then try and find you based on the Twitter message.

Listen, I can’t think up all the possible iterations of when Twitter might be useful to you but all I can say is that as more and more people use it and as more and more developers add more applications, it will become increasingly useful to you. You can read more about the possible applications here:

http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Mashups

Now the BEST reason to get Twitter is because we are only beginning to see more and more innovative applications of this device. Get used to using it now so that you are familiar with it.

Now sign up for Twitter and/ or add me to your list of friends:

www.twitter.com/brianwong

Tags: iphone, Ipod Touch, twiterrific, twitter