Short Answer: Twitter is a miniature (micro) blog, instant messaging and a social networking site.
Longer Answer: Twitter is a blog in that you can share information but it is “micro” because a “tweet” (post) is confined to only 140 characters at a time.
(I talk a lot more than that on my blog)
Twitter is also social networking but instead of “friends” you have Twitter “followers”. And you can “follow” anyone that has an open Twitter account – favourite hockey player, favourite movie star, favourite burger joint – you don’t have to request permission to follow.
It’s important to note that people who have accounts that are “open” have no control over who is “following” them. That is a key difference between Twitter and Facebook. Now, that may be okay for famous people or businesses but may not be okay for you.
Good news. It’s easy to set your account privacy to control who can follow you.
Go to “settings” > “account” > “Tweet privacy” and check the box “protect my tweets”
Don’t forget to “save changes”.
Now people will have to request to follow you, Tweets will be visible only to followers you’ve approved and other users will not be able to re-tweet your Tweets.
You can also “block” a follower if necessary.
It’s possible to have more than one Twitter account, maybe one that’s open for business and one that’s protected for personal. You will need two separate emails though, only one email address can be linked to a Twitter account.
Now these statistics actually surprised me – Facebook is still more popular than Twitter. I thought it was the other way around. 2014 numbers have Facebook at 1.3 billion monthly active users with Twitter at 271 million active users per month.
Twitter, however, is more popular with mobile users than Facebook – 86% of Twitter users are on mobile devices versus versus only 68% of Facebook users on mobile devices.
Using Twitter on your cell phone makes it easy to send instant message updates to groups of people like an update on driving conditions or how long the line is at Starbucks. Or when Babs has posted something new on her blog navigating50plus.com.
I don’t have a Twitter account yet but I am considering setting one up for this blog.
It would be kind of cool to “Tweet” some thoughts on the go.
Aside: We were out one day and I saw a sign at the Dairy Queen saying to follow them on Twitter. I laughed and said to my daughter “who the heck would ‘follow’ this particular Dairy Queen! “. She replied simply “coupons mom”. WHAT! Yup, apparently you can get coupons and deals on Twitter! I will be researching and sharing that one ASAP!
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