As the twitter phenomenon has become mainstream I have found myself being asked on a regular basis to explain its value to business people who have not yet engaged. In three postings I hope to explain what it is, why I use and how I use it.

The basics of twitter

Twitter enables me to stay in touch with a group of people who, for the most part, share common interests with me. Effectively I participate in a community where people – including me – contribute information. The contributed information may or may not be of interest to me. However I have a number of options open to me to focus the information which is being brought to my attention.

I choose whom I follow in twitter. All of the information contributed by those whom I follow is brought to my attention. I can of course choose to ignore any or all of this information. However I have chosen to follow these individuals because I expect some or all of the information contributed by them to be of interest to me. Over a period of time I will cease to follow individuals whose contributions are generally of no interest to me.

I contribute to twitter. My expectation is that my contributions will be of value to some of my current or future followers. My contributions may range from: drawing attention to one of my own blog postings, drawing attention to someone else’s contribution (twitter, blog, web site, youtuve video, etc), responding to a request for information or asking a question – seeking support/ advice from one of my followers. In general my following will grow in proportion to the quality and frequency of my contributions.

I also use an application, tweetdeck, to assist me in reviewing tweats which my be of interest to me. Using tweetdeck I have organised the people I follow into groups e.g. those who contribute in relation to ‘links golf in Ireland’, those who contribute in relation to ‘semantic web’. This way I can focus my review on one specific subject matter of interest. I also use tweetdeck to run a number of continuous searches e.g. all tweets re ‘sharepoint for knowledge management’. This searches across all tweets. It may also cause me to add specific individuals to my follow list – because of the quality/ relevance of their contribution.

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