I am not an early adopter of technologies but I have many friends and professional associates who fit that description and they have made me aware of the Twitter service that allows one to blast out 140 character messages to anyone who follows your address. I once signed up for Twitter but have yet to twitt or tweet (naturally there is a question of the proper phraseology).
This week the company behind this telegraphic service nailed down a $15 million second round of financing to make a total of $20 million invested with an $80 million valuation. As Paid Content’s Joseph Weisenthal writes:
Pretty much every discussion about Twitter has to revolve around (at least) one of three things: reliability, mainstream adoption and business model. The new round comes amidst a particularly bad stretch at the company, which has been suffering blackouts on a daily basis as of late.
Oh, so Twitter is flaky (even though it saved that student from jail); it is a big “Huh?” for most folks (survey says even young folks prefer email for business) and it has no apparent money-making mechanism. What prevents me from learning this new technique for cramming 140 characters of non sequential remarks into a mind that is already cluttered? An unfamiliarity with the technology and the lack of time to learn.
My buddy Tim Bishop eliminated the first excuse when he emailed me the list of training aids that I will append below, in case you are similarly roadblocked. Now it’s up to me to find the time.
Tim’s Twitter Tips:
- How We Use Twitter for Journalism
- Why Twitter Matters
- We Travel in Tribes
- Start an account
- How @replies work on Twitter