Of Tweets and Twooshes

I really like Twitter, which puts me in one half of the universe—the other half doesn’t. Unlike other social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Last.fm, etc., the way Twitter works is obvious: You have 140 characters to answer the question, “What are you doing?” Sometimes it’s called a “micro-blogging platform,” which is a bit silly, really: Twitter is whatever users want it to be. Some people use it as a sort of chat platform, others as a way to offer short, witty observations of life. Most are somewhere between the two.

There’s a culture to Twitter, of course, and users have invented words to describe their world. For example, when you post to the service it’s called a “Tweet”. If you manage to Tweet with exactly 140 characters it’s called a “Twoosh”, something I didn’t know until yesterday. Your fellow Twitterers are “Tweeps”, which is short for “Tweeple” (and is much nicer than the obvious “Twits”).

There are innumerable services available to amalgamate statistics from your Twitter use, among them Tweet Stats, where I learned I’ve had 10 “Twooshes”. It also told me that the top five words I used in my Tweets are: new, time, good, thanks and today. Okay, then.

So yesterday I Tweeted: “My new Tweet this time won't be good, thanks to the fact that I'm trying to use all my top 5 words today,” Which simply reinforced my top 5 words. It was fun only because it plays with Twitter; screwing with the system—what’s not to like?

As with most other social network sites, there are people who use the service to promote themselves, their products or services. While some “Tweeps” get annoyed by the spammers, I don’t have that problem because my updates are “Protected”, which means I have to approve anyone who wants to ”Follow” me, that is, be allowed to see my Tweets. “Following” is the Twitter equivalent of “friending” on other social network services. To use statistic sites like Tweet Stats, I have to temporarily “unprotect” my updates, but I can immediately turn Protection back on so it’s not a big drama.

I mostly follow folks I know through podcasting or blogging, but I also follow a few celebrities. The first was Wil Wheaten who I followed because of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” as well as his blog, which is interesting. I added others (Levar Burton, Brent Spiner and Stephen Fry) I found through other celebrities. I follow these people because they’re all using it like normal Twitter folk and not to promote their latest project or their celebrity (I should note that only Stephen Fry follows me back).

Twitter isn’t for everyone, but people who are social or who enjoy writing pithy observations (or both) will probably like it the most. I think it can be a lot of fun to take part in and entertaining to watch others play. Your results may vary.