The best way to Twitter

Twitter is a weird service. It is simple to use, yet difficult to explain to someone. To explain it best is to say its like Facebook, but Facebook without everything but the status updates. Yet, if someone said to me “Twitter or Facebook. You can only keep one.” I’d say without ANY hesitation “Twitter, thank you very much. You can keep Facebook.”! Mandy wrote an excellent piece on her Twitter experience, which you should read if you have not yet done so.

So, now you’ve heard about it, subscribed and wrote a “What are you doing” on you Twitter homepage, you might be thinking: “What?! Is that it?! WTF are everyone on about? This is not as great as everyone says it is…” I’ve heard tons of people saying that. In fact, I’ve said it myself in the beginning!

Don’t abandon Twitter just yet. Turn around and go back. You’ve been doing it all wrong! Here is what you SHOULD be doing:

In the menu at the top, click on “Settings”.

Twitter menu

In you settings page, click on the devices tab/button. On there, you’ll see two options namely Mobile Phone or Instant Messenger. We’ll do the Instant Messenger part, so enter your GTalk (Google Talk) username (it is usually the same as your Gmail email address) and click on the Save button.

Twitter device options

Next you will get a code. Highlight the code with your mouse and copy it. Go to your Instant Messenger (like GTalk for example) and add [email protected] as a contact. Once you’ve added it, start a chat and paste the code into the chat and enter. This is to verify yourself to Twitter. Once that is done, you are all good to go!

Twitter auth code

Righto! You’ve successfully set up Twitter in your IM, now what?! The first thing you can do is to add some friends. You can either search for friends on Twitter itself or browse some of your friends’ friends. Add them on the web site by clicking the follow button and then by turning Device updates on.

Twitter follow

…or you can simply look at their Twitter username, which is Henre in the above example and go to your Instant Messenger, and in the Twitter chat window, you type in “follow Henre” (without the quotes) and press enter. Now Henre should get an email notifying him that you are following his updates and he may or may not follow you. Every time he “tweets” (a tweet is an update in Twitter, FYI) you will get a message in your twitter chat window. Wash, rinse and repeat the process with others you’d like to follow.

Now for the really cool stuff! Let’s suppose that you are fanatic about Roquefort cheese and you would like to know every time someone mentions the word Roquefort. In your Twitter chat window type in “track roquefort”. That would result in you getting a message every time someone mentions the word “Roquefort” in their tweets. You can add as much as you’d like. To see a list of keywords you are tracking, simply type in “tracking” and enter in your Twitter chat window.

Now lets suppose Henre says “Roquefort sucks!” and I would like to comment on that, I would simply write “@Henre why do you say that! It stinks, but rocks!”. Keep in mind that everyone would see that message, though, but Henre can see that it was directed to him and he can respond by typing “@Stii it smells like feet!”.

If you are really upset that Henre said something bad about something so sacred, you can send him a direct message and take the fight to a personal level by simply typing in “d Henre How could you say that! Bhwaaaaa…”. Only Henre will get that message now and can respond in private to you by doing the same. Remember though – if you send a direct message, you do not put an @ sign in front of the user’s name.

Another thing you have to remember is that tweets can only be 140 characters long. If your message is longer than that, it will be chopped off.

So, join us on Twitter! Not only is it fun, it is also the #1 gossip channel. Many things have “leaked” on Twitter. The other great thing is that I’ve gained great “real life” friends! It is also an invaluable source of information. I’ve seen it used as a calculator, dictionary, search engine, etc… Oh and if you are looking for some Tweeters (Twitter users) to start with, go to http://satwitter.pbwiki.com for a list of South African Twitter users. Credit goes to Eve Dmochowska for that brilliant initiative.

Oh, and I can hear it already: “I’m not as lucky as you that I sit in front of my computer the whole day!” or “I don’t have time” I’ll admit that it is not always to everyone’s liking. Thing is, try it before you make up your mind. Try it the way I explained here, though! See you on the other side.