Twitter - What Is It?

According to the Twitter FAQ, "Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you're doing." That doesn't really tell us very much. Wikipedia says, "Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates via SMS, instant messaging, email, to the Twitter website, or any one of the multitude of Twitter applications now available".

Twitter asks the question, "What are you doing?" and allows you to send a small update (limited to just 140 characters) to your followers. The concept is amazingly simple and that is perhaps one of the main reasons why it has caught on like wildfire. The restriction to 140 characters has resulted in Twitter being labeled "micro blogging". A traditional blog is a log of what somebody is up to, but in a richer, more detailed format. One of the key benefits of Twitter is that you can send and receive updates (also called tweets) via your browser, email , instant messaging clients and SMS so you can keep in touch no matter where you are.

From the "Big Juicy Twitter Guide

MRRL's Twitter account, found at http://www.twitter.com/mrrl contains announcements of library news, bookmobile route changes and other library-related information. To get an account with Twitter, just go to http://www.twitter.com and click on the "Get Started-Join!" button on that page.

Fill in the short form (check out the image to the left - that is all you need to give Twitter to get started!) and you will have your own Twitter account.

Once you have done that, go to MRRL's Twitter page and click on the "Follow" button. Turn on Notifications (click on the down arrow where it says "Following" and check the "On" button under Notifications.