Benefits of Twitter

This little graphic called 'The Four Stages of Getting Twitter' perfectly explains how Twitter works. I found it on a website and couldn't resist using it here to illustrate the stages you have to go through to understand how Twitter works.

Before I attended the research skills module in college, I never thought of Twitter as a research tool. If I'm being honest, I had a very negative attitude towards the micro blogging site. I think my negative attitude was formed by the mindless comments that people used to write on it. For me Twitter's birth was when people would tweet complete rubbish on their account; things like, I'm drinking a cup of tea, or I'm leaving my house now.

Well, for the benefit of the research skills module and my own research, I have tried to look at Twitter with an open mind and forget what I had thought up until now.

From what I have seen so far, Twitter is being used by all kinds of people and organisations. I have seen mega corporations, small and medium sized companies, non profit organisations and individuals use it. They use it to ask for help, to ask questions, to keep up to date with what ever is going on in the world. Some people do not tweet (send out any messages) but instead use it to keep up to date with the their chosen field, be it media current affairs, the price of gold or even .

I think Twitter is similar to an email account, except that people can see your inbox.

Setting up my Twitter account

It was surprisingly easy to open a Twitter account. I was surprised because some online sites can be very difficult to sign up with. I did use Google to search for forums and blogs to help me with any questions I had about the early stages of setting up the account. For example, I was totally new to Twitter, so I did not even know what any of the terminology meant. And there seems to be a lot of new terminology to get used to, things like - tweet, retweet, followers, following, mentions etc.

My next blog post will show how I personalised my Twitter account and used Twitter to communicate with like minded others and ask for advice to do with my research.