What is Twitter?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service (e.g. on a cell phone), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook.

Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application. For SMS, four gateway numbers are currently available: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, as well as a United Kingdom number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email.

From the Twitter Newsletter:

Last weekend CNN lead with a big story about James Buck, a graduate student in journalism from the University of California-Berkeley who was arrested last month in Mahalla, Egypt while covering an anti-government protest. Thinking quickly, James was able to send a one-word Twitter update: "Arrested." His followers in Egypt and back in the US reacted by contacting the university and the consulate on his behalf. Before long, James was updating Twitter with another one-word message, "Free."



Do you follow me?

People tweet for a variety of reasons. For some it is an alternative to the traditional blog. All of your tweets are saved and archived for later reference, so you will never forget what you were doing at any given moment. It would be kind of a neat way to record your kiddos milestones, don't you think?

I jumped on the Twitter band wagon at Camp Baby. It was so much fun reading the tweets from everyone during some otherwise dull sessions. I now tweet to build my online community and have made a ton of new friends. I follow such a diverse bunch of people - moms, dads, CEOs, PR folks, democrats, republicans, bloggers, teachers, Christians, and Mormons... the list goes on!

What are YOU doing? I would love to know. Leave me a comment with your twitter handle and I'll follow you. Or, better yet start following me and I'll follow you back!