I live in Los Angeles and it isn’t uncommon to run into famous people in the most unusual places: dry cleaner, dentist’s waiting room, kid’s ballet class and so on. It’s always exciting and something that can add a little spice to living in a town where, when we say it’s a company town, we mean the entertainment industry.
Often these same celebrities are active users of social media and blogging and otherwise connecting with their public and friends in creative ways. So when I meet a celebrity, I might add them to my Facebook or post photos on Flickr.com. More recently, I’ve started checking to see if they are using Twitter. Last week I saw Josh Malina (star of “The West Wing”, “Sports Night” and more recently “Big Shots”) in the supermarket and put him to the Twitter test. When I couldn’t find him, I posted, “now when i run into a celebrity, my first inclination is to check to see if they are on twitter. Josh Malina FAIL”. Imagine my surprise when a few days later, a message appeared in my Twitter messages from Josh Malina himself telling me he was now on Twitter!
What is Twitter? Often called a “micro-blogging” service, Twitter allows the user to send out short messages to people who subscribe to their feed. You are limited to a maximum of 140 characters at a time. This causes some people to often make no sense while others have achieved haiku-like poetic brevity, even able to include weblinks and get it under 140 characters. It’s a bit of an art.
Why would someone use it? Some people are using it to create a public messaging system with fans and political followers. Famous celebrity users include singer John Mayer and politician John McCain (see more celebrities on Twitter below). Some famous people on Twitter are clearly not actually entering the messages but using an assistant or employee to get the job done and it shows. Their messages are usually nothing more than requests for you to watch their show, visit their website or buy their tickets. It’s a real turnoff and does little to take advantage of the service or create an image of someone who cares about their fans.
Others use it for networking with like-minded people about a particular issue or topic. Perhaps you love to travel in Europe but need help in selecting cities or finalizing a hotel choice. You might find advice from those who’ve been there and done that or even locals who are willing to give you the benefit of their experience. Some have used Twitter to arrange get-togethers or “Tweetups” just by sending a message out on the service. Famed basketball player Shaquille O’Neal did this recently while eating alone in a restaurant, he sent out a message to see if any Twitter users were nearby. There were two in the restaurant and they soon joined him at his table.
Twitter can be used to update your Facebook page, though with the latest revisions to the site, the frequency of Twitter updates can make you takeover your friend’s homepage with “news”. You can send your “tweets” or Twitter messages a variety of ways. I use a third-party service called Tweetdeck to show me all the Twitter activity of those I follow and to allow me to easily send messages, attach web addresses and search on topics of interest. That service works when I’m on the computer using a web browser. You can also send an SMS text message from your phone or visit the homepage at twitter.com/home and enter your message there. And there are Twitter services designed just for the Apple iPhone.
If this interests you enough to visit the twitter.com home page you might get discouraged because all you’ll see is the login form. You have to create an account and start adding people to see what all the fuss is about. You can get a flavor for the messaging activity on some sites like Celebrity Tweet which tracks the activity on Twitter for famous celebrities.
Here are some steps for getting started using Twitter.
- 1. Visit http://www.twitter.com/and create your username and password
- 2. Put something important about you in your profile so people using Twitter search will find you. For example, “Realtor in Phoenix, parent of four kids, avid golfer” will tell people on Twitter loads about your interests.
- 3. Visit the Frequently Asked Questions to get tips on adding your friends from current email and other accounts.
- 4. After you’ve found some friends, click “Follow” under their profile image.
- 5. Configure your account preferences so you receive an email when someone follows you. Then, it’s considered good Twitter manners to follow them in return. But watch out for spammers!
- 6. If you prefer to remain private, you can block your messages from the public feed of Twitter and restrict who can follow you.
- 7. You can respond to a friend in Twitter by putting the “@” symbol followed by their name in a message. For example, send me a message by typing @marianmerritt, followed by your text.
- 8. You can send private messages (not seen by their followers) by putting a D for Direct Message, followed by their user name. Again, the example is D marianmeritt.
- 9. Web addresses are best when short. Twitter will truncate many of them using the http://www.tinyurl.com/service. It doesn’t always work for me so sometimes I have to visit that service myself first.
- 10. Get started and if you like my blog, please follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/marianmerritt.
Celebrities on Twitter and their Twitter name and the number of “followers” or people subscribing:
Britney Spears /britneyspears 563,563
Ashton Kutcher /aplusk 516,441
Jimmy Fallon /jimmyfallon 446,040
Shaquille O’Neal /the_real_shaq 414,182
John Mayer /Johncmayer 361,330
Stephen Fry /Stephenfry 342,534
MC Hammer /mchammer 295,812
Senator John McCain /senjohnmccain 281,815
Also: http://community.norton.com/t5/Ask-Marian/Twitter-A-New-Source-of-Parenting-Community/ba-p/37677