Twitter

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Dr Lobster*
Posts: 2104
Joined: Sat 30 Aug, 2003 20.14

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i just don't get it. i don't get 'tweets'. just seems like a load of uninformed shite to me.
woah
Posts: 365
Joined: Sun 28 Mar, 2010 12.39

I got myself a personal one yesterday reluctantly - thinking exactly the same as you. But it's not quite as bad as it seems. It depends on whether you have a bunch of friends to follow and communicate with, or whether you just plan on stalking celebrities and their goings on.

With friends, it's quite a good thing as long as you stick to only close friends - you feel more free to post what you're doing, how you're feeling - rather than lots of acquaintances seeing the same on Facebook or other social sites.

But I think a lot of people just use their accounts for stalking celebrities, seeing a massive homepage of all their drivel, and posting things on their wall desperate for a response - which really doesn't appeal to me. For example, whoever gets some interest and excitement out of Spongebob's Official Twitter, unless they are five, need psychological help.

I'm not as big a fan of it as I am of Facebook but it's a handy little tool if you've got some people to share it with.
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DVB Cornwall
Posts: 519
Joined: Fri 24 Jun, 2005 21.42

It's fine for Newsfeeds and RSS functions, adding the odd celeb at times can be fun, and yes frustrating too.

(and thanks Pete for sorting out the access to Metropol issue)
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Pete
Posts: 7589
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 13.36
Location: Dundee

Depends who you follow really, there are some really fab people on there. Course going in during a busy moment and following a hashtag (such as #bbcqt on a Thursday night) is often very enjoyable.
"He has to be larger than bacon"
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iSon
Moderator
Posts: 1632
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 23.24
Location: London

I am really warming to twitter - more as a follower than a contributor mind - I'm not sure I have very much interesting to say. The power of it for me is the ability to search by word to find out what's going on. For example when the Japan situation was sketchy, simply searching for Japan presented you with so much information - surprisingly most of it pretty well informed as it was re-tweets of stuff that was being reported locally but of course that weren't on the radar of the bigger outlets.

Twitter also feels like a very personal thing, and I like that. It strips the layer of shite you can sometimes get with facebook and gets you directly to the people you want to follow.
Good Lord!
rts
Posts: 1637
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 14.09

It's really down to who you follow, and segmenting your following using the 'lists' option. I have lists for news, music, technology, friends, breaking news, and see at a glance what's going on. Using a third party application like Tweetdeck makes monitoring Twitter and your lists a doddle. I use Tweetdeck's Chrome application, which runs in a tab - http://www.tweetdeck.com/chrome/.

Hashtags are great way of finding and interacting people discussing a particular topic. Following #bbcqt for example is great to see live reaction to Question Time, and to interact directly with others on the same topic. Speed is great, 140 characters instantly available, so news breaks fast and often first on Twitter. (An element of caution is therefore required).

Whether you can be arsed to contribute or not, by separating the wheat from the chaff and following the right people, Twitter becomes a great resource of knowledge, news and information gathering.
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Pete
Posts: 7589
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 13.36
Location: Dundee

Also, and this is very important, never take any notice of the utter guff on the front page. It's always poor quality jokes, weird American telly things, or "I am my own free spirit" type self help things for morons.
"He has to be larger than bacon"
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