What is Twitter?

Twitter is a micro-blogging service and can even be considered a social network.  Its allows users to send updates, otherwise known as ‘tweets’ and read other users’ updates.  The tweets are much like the status updates in Facebook and can be no more than 140 characters in length.

Check out the explanation of what Twitter is in plain English from commoncraft.

Twitter asks the question, “What are you doing?”  When you need to say something that’s not necessarily directed at a particular person or merits an email and definitely not as in depth as a blog post, send a tweet.  There are multiple ways to send messages to Twitter.  There’s the web interface at Twitter.com but there’s a plethora of Twitter applications such as Twitterrific, Twitterfox, TweetDeck, Twhirl.

So, how can you make use of Twitter?

17 Ways YouCan Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners
ChrisPirillo’s Top Five Uses of Twitter
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Howto Use Twitter – Tips for Bloggers
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Top 10 Uses of Twitter and Tools
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Power-Tweeting: 101 Everyday Uses for Twitter
How We Use Twitter for Journalism