Twitter (and similar services) is a very interesting service that's just come into existence in the past couple of years. It's a bit like IM, and a bit like IRC, but all of it's on the web. It's one of the new popular "social networking" sites.

My Twitter homepage, showing my friends' messages

With Twitter, you create a username and password, just like with most other social networking sites. Then find other people using Twitter, by typing their names into the search box at the top of the page. Click on the person's name to view their profile page, which shows their most recent messages (or "tweets," as they're known), as well as a bit of information about the person. On the profile page, click the "Follow" button.

A Twitter user - click the "Follow" button to add as a friend

When you return to your homepage (twitter.com/home), you'll see all the messages/tweets of the people you're following, sorted by date, with the most recent tweets at the top. Now, describe what you're doing--or say something interesting or thought-provoking--in the text box at the top of the page, and click the "update" button. Your tweet will appear below.

But here's the neat thing: Your tweet will also appear on the homepage of everyone else who's following you. So, if you have several friends who are all on Twitter, and they're all following each other, your tweet will show up on their homepages.

If you want to talk to someone in particular, include their Twitter name in your Tweet, with the "@" before it. So, to send a message to me, post a tweet that says "@BrentNewhall Hi, Brent!" That tweet will show up on my homepage even if we're not following each other.

So why use Twitter? Think of Twitter as a long-form conversation, where hours might pass between each person's statement, and that's visible to a wider audience than a typical IM conversation. It lets you do a bit of research before replying, and allows others to comfortably chime in.

Twitter's not the only service doing this; Jaiku and identi.ca are other popular, similar websites. None of them have as many users as Twitter.

Twitter On Your Desktop

You can go one step further by downloading an application that will display your Twitter feed on your desktop, just like AIM. TweetDeck is one application, as is Twhirl.

To use Twhirl, go to Twhirl.org and click the "INSTALL NOW" button. This will install a free program (donations accepted) called Twhirl. Launch it, enter your Twitter username and password, and it will display your Twitter feed in a window on your computer. This window will be updated as your friends send tweets.