Increasing Usefulness of TWITTER
February 4th, 2009 | 
Author: Twitter is impressive, particularly because the service is catching on with main-stream America. The Internet netizen loved Twitter from the start. Twitter allowed people to enter brief status messages, words of wisdom, or hapless comments that family, friends, or other interested persons could read. Like other cordial web sites people followed the Twitter broadcasts of persons that interested them. My sisters and I used the service off and on to enter our latest status. Cute.
Twitter is no longer just a unique social networking tool. TWITTER has become a useful wide-area or local notification tool but still maintains its unique status as a social-status notification service. What’s changed is that news services like Fox News and others send notifications associated with breaking news, corporations make announcements, offices of emergency services like Maryland’s MEMA send disaster related information.
Using either the Twitter home page from your computer or even your cellular telephone you are now seconds away from the latest broadcasts. You can either read the brief broadcast or click on the URL contained in the broadcast to connect to to the full story at the broadcaster’s web address. Twitter use a service called TinyURL to create short easy to recall web URLS for each “twit.” The only drawback with TinyURL is it’s occasional down time. As I write this article all the links to news stores I want to read are broken becuase TinyURL appears to be down. The other drawback is that TinyURL is listed by at least one Internet browser protection program as dangerous. The program is by Zone Alarm. In order to use TinyURL on my computer I finally had to uninstall Zone Alarm’s browser protection program.
Using Twitter you can “follow” other Twitter users of interest to you using the Twitter website. You can also use programs like TweetDeck. TweetDeck connects to your Twitter account and displays your latest Tweets and those of the persons or companies you are following. The interface is easy to use. I follow Fox News and several other Twitter users
Using another on-line service called TweetBeep an individual, group, or corporation can monitor the Tweets of others to track trends based on keywords and phrases. This is a real-time marketing tool that a company could use to monitor its reputation e.g. “What are people saying about us.” Used with other tools it is one more tool in a company’s arsenal of information about its public persona.
Twitter is cool. Use Twitter if your are not already using it. Twitter is fun for families and friends and provides a unique way to stay in touch with companies, governments, and others with whom you want to maintain a relationaship.
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Posted in Internet
Twitter keeps me up to date on your blog … with every entry I get a notice to my cell phone … nice way to keep in touch with my big brother
Baby sisters rock!
The reference to TinyURL in my blog article is incorrect. I did some further research when my sister told me it worked for her. Doh! I discovered that the firewall in the Zone Alarm product disables all links to TinyURL by default. According to the Zone Alarm people, too many hazardous websites are using the TinyURL service making it a potential threat to the Internet community. That is their opinion not mine.
I understand the need to be careful but I follow sites like Drudge, Fox News, Coast Guard, Twitter users I know etc. That said I disabled the by-default TinyURL defense system in Zone Alarm.
Use your Internet noggin to decide which links you click folks. That may be your best defense if someone else considers a service you use a risk.