Comments on: Newbie's guide to Twitter

CNET has created a newbie's guide to Twitter.

[mattumanu]

another instant messenger?

Why? The thing says I can't just post, "why?" because it's not 10 or more characters, so, in the vane of Homer Simpson:

Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?Why?

[mattumanu]

I know that's technically flooding, but...

I just wanted to prove a point about instant messenger clients. Over the years I've blocked more people than I've chatted with, which is sad to say the least.

<Mattumanu appears to be offline and may not reply>

[boost ventilator]

Facebook Status

I have been using Facebook's status and would love to see it tied to Twitter.

There is an app that allows you to tie your Facebook Status with every Tweet you send. http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/

Your facebook status will be updated to "Boost is twittering: blah blah blah.." except I am sure you'll say something more epic, and less fail.

[karenbuitenwerf]

Go to a www.ping.fm... you can tie your activity on one social media site to another... i.e. everytime you update your Facebok status, it creates a Tweet, or vice versa...

[kathy_torez]

This is nothing - new :(

What a non sense, this Twitter is nothing but Instant Messaging & Chat tied to a Web database. Something that has been around since 1997 in many forms!
What did the message from the VC Bosses go out to Cnet staff to hype out another useless, not new, San Francisco (Silicon Valley) based so called Web 2.0 company!
How many of these BS companies that dont do anything new, dont sell anything, are you going to Hype out :(

[caldwdo]

Just another facet of Web 2.0 and Wikieconomics

Another way to be connected but not in person. Keep those msgs short and sweet, but will anyone be able to engage in small talk if they are used to 140 character text messages. This may be a solution before I know I have a problem. I will have to try it. www.dougcaldwell.net

[dsterry]

After using Twitter for a while, one thing you may desire is a way to search either your own or the public's posts in general. To do this, you can go over to my site: http://tweetscan.com and search for whatever you want. Think of it as tapping into whatever watercooler gossip you care about.

[carmen2u]

Love this! Thanks for the tip. This is helping me determine how often our non-profit is mentioned and the healthcare topics we address.

[diablopolis]

Thanks for very interesting article. I really enjoyed reading all of your posts. It?s interesting to read ideas, and observations from someone else?s point of view? makes you think more. So please keep up the great work.
Regards. (Editors' note: spam links removed.)

[twitterlights]

i-Lighter version 2.1 added one touch micro-blogging to twitter from any page on the web. Go to www.twitterlights.com and download latest version. Quite nice and has added one-click features as well, all free.

[WhatsThePoint]

I simply don't understand why anyone would want to have anyone else know what they were doing, or what their personal status was, at the level these "Twit's" (is that a name for Twitter users? :)). I have the same issue with Facebook. People begging other people to "be my friend, I have 20,000 friends now) just need a life.

Oddly, I don't give a rats what my friends are doing at this very minute. If I want to know, I'll ask them... and actually have a conversation. Wow, sounds like social networking, eh?

[rjhintz]

It's useful for following services such as, for example, a pizza place that makes a single variety of pizza for the day and you want to know what it is. I'll refrain from posting the link for the one I follow to keep from drifting into spam land.

[paul21m]

I read on a forum lately about how you can earn via Twitter. You build relationships, add people up, build either a following or follow someones twits. Then you earn from finding job or freelance opportunities that you will not find quickly enough or in time via normal methods. Ive also read in Techcrunch that some twitter members are selling their pages. WEIRD. I rarely use it..

Thanks,
Paul (Editors' note: spam link removed.)

[madie20]

I know Twitter quite some time, but your guide has really helped. Thank you. (Editors' note: spam link removed.)

[peterparker1352]

------------------------------------------------
Dave Winer, father of RSS says ?Twitter, as it was conceived, was never meant to live.?

?It?s very possible with better engineering its architecture might have gone on for a few more years, but eventually it would have hit this wall, where there were too many people posting too many twits to too many followers. The scale of the system as conceived rises exponentially.?

So is the end of Twitter getting near? I hope not. Twitter I hope that you are listening and you better start taking things more seriously.
-----------------------------------------------

Here's my two cents.

For instance there are about 100m users of yahoo messenger and usually 2-3 of them talk at a time that means scalability of 300m conversations. On the other hand with 100m twitter users who usually send messages to 100-10,000 other users the scalability required is 10,000m to 10^6m I have never known any current architecture based on webservers to handle such a scale. So according to me Twitter was never meant to live. It is like a concept car that will never see production. Users of twitter don't understand this and they don't care.
They don't know whats happening when the website is down. The sad part is that the best analysts claim that Twitter is a billion dollar company in one year of operations. There is an old saying before the days of when people understood permutation combinations. One peasant asked a king to give him rice equal to the total amount gotten by placing double the number of rice grains on a chess square than the previous square, starting with one rice grain. There are 8x8=64 squares. We seriously need to visit grade 7 mathematics.

I know of only one News/Messaging system that supports around 1 billion users sending messages to all 1 billion users each. Thats a scalability of 10^12m. It is not Web based but rather on a massively scalable serverless P2P architecture based. The team is soft spoken and when I last talked to them I was told that they don't care about money or hype or fame but rather for just the passion of next generation global systems that will stand the test of worldwide use. Its called Mermaid News Mermaid

They have other softwares too but this post is about Twitter and Messaging. Once everyone comprehends basic mathematics that goes behind scalable algorithms they would go past the flashy screen and hype to actually want a system they can trust. To the analysts I would say it is easy to create a business plan, create a hype and raise $20m funding it is far more difficult to create something of use.

[nico044]

I personally found twitxr nicer. The difference between Twitter and twitxr is that with twitxr you can send a picture. You can see an example of a twitxr wedgit on my blog http://www.nicoposting.com

[Bookpleasures]

Hi: It was a few days before I understood some of the possibilities of Tweeter. If you have a product or service you wish to promote and you have a web site filled with content, this is a good way to spread the word. For example, I have a book reviewing and author interviewing site where I have posted over 2500 reviews and over 450 author interviews. I am now able to use Tweeter as another way to promote the site by linking to these articles. Another good point about Tweeter is that you can network with people you wish to contact . In my case, I am interested in authors, publicists, publishers etc. By searching for these on Tweeter I was able to gain new followers.

Good luck

Norm, Bookpleasures.com

[bestreseller]

Great post! Does anyone know how to send a tweet to all your followers only?

[pbradish]

Twitter has helped us connect with our customer base, and is VERY easy to use. In fact, if you have a wordpress blog there are plenty of plug ins to help you send automatic tweets. http://www.mmaoverload.com

[theshane11]

There are also many sites like http:\\www.twittercontests.com that you can have fun with.

[MysticalSadhu]

There are many functionalities with twitter, some can be readily found and are clear for how to use. I have not yet found clearly how to use a function that involves "#[yaddayadda]" I've searched any of various # links, though still cannot figure out how to join such functionalities and remarks.

How to, please.

[JPHooks]

@MysticalSadhu means that Im sending you something or replied to something #something is a searchable term to be filtered

[bigcabdaddy]

Thanks for this article. Still trying to wrap my brain around why Twitter is such a big deal.

[TweetiestTwitter]

I need a little more help before I'm the smartest Twitter around! ;~)

[guruvan]

amusing to see all the predictions of the untimely demise of twitter. lol. With another $35Million in funding just announced, it won't be going away anytime soon.

Just like IMs it WILL scale. There's enough at stake that people want that they will make SURE it scales.

Scaling is just a mere matter of hardware + programming ;-)