Mastering Twitter: What Is Twitter?

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that allows you answer the question, "What are you doing?" by sending short text messages 140 characters in length, called "tweets", to your friends, or "followers."

Twitter messages, commonly known as tweets are made up of up to 140 characters; much like an SMS. You can still say much in such few words, cant you? This is an aspect that makes Twitter experience charming. You can send a message to a group of users or a single user, or communicate directly with friends you have followed (and have followed you) with short tweets like “I’ll be attending the summer gig this weekend, you may join.” This lets know what your plans are and if they intend to join you.

Twitter can be accessed not only through a computer, but also through your internet enabled phone. You can send a single message to one or multiple users, follow friends and read messages sent to you without much difficulty. However, if you are pretty new to this social networking service, here is an easy guide to help you get started and moving.

The short format of the tweet is a defining characteristic of the service, allowing informal collaboration and quick information sharing that provides relief from rising email and IM fatigue. Twittering is also a less gated method of communication: you can share information with people that you wouldn't normally exchange email or IM messages with, opening up your circle of contacts to an ever-growing community of like-minded people.

If you don’t have a twitter account, signing up is quite simple and it’s free. Just go to www.twitter.com and fill in the sign up form with your name email and password. 

Twitter has many uses for both personal and business use. It's a great way to keep in touch with your friends and quickly broadcast information about where you are and what you're up to. For example, "I'm downtown and aching for some sushi. Anyone like to join me?"

For business, Twitter can be used to broadcast your company's latest news and blog posts, interact with your customers, or to enable easy internal collaboration and group communication.