EyeSee

I finally took the plunge a few months ago and signed up on Twitter. It’s as simple as

Q What are you doing?

A 140 characters to answer

Update

That’s it in a nutshell however it has some really cool features which I will share at length here.

This is what the home page looks like.

What are you saying?

This is where you say what you have to say about whatever you want to say.  The catch is that you have only 140 characters to say it in.  Click update when you are done.

It could be some thing serious like a product launch or just as simple as where you are having you next cup of java.  If you share a link, it does shorten the link, tinyurl, thus maximizing on the 140 characters.

Like most web 2.0 or social networking sites it’s evolved from a purely social to business related as well.  I find it very useful for following the latest product launches, news, ideas, information and whereabouts of people.

Someone mentioned that she turns twitter on her mobile when her spouse travels on business.  He is very good about posting updates like boarding plane, plane landed, renting car etc. It puts her mind at ease to know that he is ok.

If you like short and simple then twitter is for you.  It’s not for lengthy posts with comments.

Let’s explore the top navigation bar.

Profile

This shows every tweet you have ever made.

Find People

You have the option to invite people from other networks.  Once logged into your email it will go through the list and see who from your address book are already on twitter.

Select those that you’d like to start following.  Continue.

For those that are not there you can select people that you want to invite and click on send invites.

The other option is to invite via email.  Twitter will send an automated email inviting them to join, a standard in the social networking world.

At first I had a hard time with this feature as most people I knew were not on Twitter nor had the desire to be on it.  So using my address book from email did not work well.  As I started networking and hanging out in the Social Media spaces I found a lot more people to follow.

Settings

here are the usual Account and Password settings.  Fill out whatever information you want displayed.  If you are a very private person you do have the option of protecting your updates.  Note you will not be on the public timeline if you select this option and only people following your updates will see them.

Devices

Everything is mobile these days.

So do add this feature it will go a long way in sending those instant updates.

Notices

This is a great feature.  “Nudge me if I haven’t updated in 24 hrs” a txt to you phone.

@ Replies – this is very important as this is the filter for the volume of information you want to receive.

The usual email me for updates and newsletter gotchya.

Picture

Great to personalize your profile.  Note size only 700k.

Design

This is twitters attempt at customization.  This is definitely an area that needs improvement.  It’s best to select a current theme as attempts to customize fail miserably.

Now the Right navigation bar.

You will see you photo, name.  Below this you will see ….

Following

Tells how many people you are following, in this case I am following 105 people.  Clicking on this link will give you the listing of all of these individuals.  You do have the option of removing them or inviting more people.

Followers

Shows how many people are following me.  In this case 35.  Clicking on this link gives a full listing.

Updates

This indicates how many updates are there, 39.  I guess I need to start tweeting more : )

@Replies

This shows all the tweets that have been in response to my tweets

Direct messages

This is where you can send a direct message to the people following you. It has the usual Inbox and sent folders

Favourites

Star your vavourite twitter updates and they get saved here.  A great feature if you have you find a link useful for example.

Everyone

Well it’s what it is, everyone who is tweeting on twitter!!!!

Following

This shows a summary of the people you are following with the option of showing all.

Device Updates

This is where you set up you mobile device, got to add this to my to do list.

Well there you have it, Twitter 101.  So if you are not on twitter go ahead and try it out.  I will share my thoughts on the good, bad and ugly of twitter in the new year.

Now that you know what RSS is all about, here’s a little information on RSS readers/aggregators. RSS readers are very similar to email clients. They are free so if you don’t like the functionality of one you can quickly and easily move to another.

Some?of the RSS readers are?

• google reader
• bloglines
• newsgator
• my yahoo
• feedburner

They all work on the basic principle of

• creating an account
• logging in
• adding the URL of the site you want to follow

The alternate way to follow a site is to look for one of the icons above, this will automatically open the reader of your choice.

So try it out and see which reader you like.

Here is a RSS in Plain English?still confused how about RSS the Oprah way.

Have you bookmarked your favourite websites and check them on a regular basis? If you find this rather time consuming and frustrating when the website you look at has the same information from a couple of months ago then?RSS is for you. ?

RSS aka Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication?is a format for delivering regularly changing web content like headlines, update notices, blogs, wikis etc…?directly to you.?It saves you time and helps you to get the information you want quiclky, after it was published.

Another analogy is a magazine subscription, only in this case it’s delivered to your RSS reader everytime there is an update?

For you geeks out there, RSS is an XML-based format for content distrubution. Webmasters create an RSS file containing headlines?and descriptions of specific information.

A lot of websites these days offer RSS feeds. It’s easy to see if a website has an RSS feed, it will have the orange button in the link window.

RSS is a free and easy way to promote your website without the need for complicated contant sharing partnerships.