Posted on March 12, 2007 - by John

Twitter

I love all these words that the net keeps coming up with. Flickr, bebo, skype… and so on. Regardless of the name, some of them serve a purpose, and some of them are a bit of fun. And then there are those, where you wonder, is there really a use for this, and why would I need it?

So what is Twitter?

Without referring to the site itself, to find out what they say their latest service is about, here is my opinion of what it does. Twitter tells people what you’re up to right now, and what you were up to in the past. It’s also a social network, in that you can add your friends to your Twitter account and see what they are up to also.

How does it work?

Basically after signing up for an account, you can fill a form to tell people what your ‘up to’, it’s a basic form, and there is nothing complicated about it. The joy here is, that you can update it via text message (charged as ‘texting’ the UK for Eire users) or you can update your status via IM (not yahoo or MSN compatible).

Why would you use it?

I have seen some reviews of this service, some negative and some positive. But I suppose its what you use if for that makes Twitter either a useful tool or something people mess about with and then disregard it.

Example 1

Someone (like me) who likes these new pieces of technology, but has no real use for it, I certainly don’t want a record of what I have done for the day made public ( you can make it private)

Example 2

Damien, who is at the Irish Blog awards whats to keep people up-to-date on whats happening. He can do so easily via his laptop or via a text.

I am having a bit of fun with this right now, but honestly, I do not see a use that I would have with this. I think having a blog and photo album is enough information for people for me.

Who uses it?

Well apparently some a great deal of Irish people are fans of the service, there is a OMPL file here