Author: Adam Brown, Somewhat Functional
Originally Published in Sorted Magazine
What are you doing? Its one of the first things we often ask friends and family. Even if the answer is just mowing the lawn or cooking dinner, it makes us feel connected to each others lives. Most of the time, our day to day lives are hidden from people who care. Sure, there are emails, and blogs, and of course text messages but often they just doesn’t get the job done; after all you wouldn’t send an email to a friend, telling them you were having coffee would you? What about the people who want to know about the little things that go on in your life, how do you keep them up to date with your daily goings on. Thanks to Twitter you can. Twitter makes it possible to share small bite sized updates about your life online, and follow the updates of people that matter to you via the web.
Twitter makes it possible to follow the lives of your friends and colleagues quickly and easily, many major news outlets like the BBC, CNN and Sky news post breaking news to their Twitter pages. Many Twitter users come from interesting backgrounds, their profiles reflect this, interesting web links and information is just waiting to be found out. Overtime you start to build up a view of your friends outside blogs and emails, after all real life is what happens in between these. With Twitter people start to build a picture of real life.
“How do I get started?” I hear you ask! Is easy! Sign up at www.twitter.com, and search for friends, simply by entering your email address. Twitter will then search your address book, looking for people in your list with twitter accounts. Once you have found some friends, just click “Follow”! Its that simple! Soon you will see their updates on your twitter page. Within hours you will soon see those little things that make life colourful, really stand out. Writing an update is easy, you can do it via the web at twitter.com, download add-on’s your browser, use instant messaging or even text messages. It really is that simple.
I’m sure the big question you are asking is am I safe? In a word yes. Twitter alerts you via email when ever anyone starts to follow your updates, you can then go to you Twitter page, and find out who they are, if you don’t want them to follow you, just click “block”. For added security you can make your stream private, that way only people you approve can follow your updates. If at any point you want to remove your account, Twitter also provides a Delete account function.
The big question is, would I recommend it? Over all I would, Twitter is the first thing in a long time that I have been truly excited about on the Internet. In this world of fast moving, smooth taking people, Twitter shows you the lighter side of life, after all wouldn’t it be nice to know when a friends going for lunch?
Be sure to follow us on twitter! Follow Sorted Magazine, and get the latest updates!
