Some friends and a lot people’s been asking me internet questions. So, for my first venture, I’m doing a three part series of Twitter-related posts introducing Twitter to the hip-hop community. It’s a website that looks odd to many of us, and make even the most hardcore of tech users and hip-hop fans paranoid.
Here’s a brief overview of what to expect in this post:
- What is Twitter and why it’s so popular.
- What Twitter is not (aka stalker fears)
- How people use Twitter
- How to get and set up a Twitter account
- Breaking Down Twitter.
If you would like to see what the other posts will cover, scroll to the bottom of this post for an overview of the next two posts.
What’s a Twitter & why is it so popular?
In simple, layman’s terms, Twitter is a miro-blogging website. And what’s a “mirco-blog”? Take away mirco, and you’ll get “blog”, like Thought Remixer (a Wordpress-Powered Site), Wordpress, Blogger, or even the MySpace blogs. The only difference is that with a micro-blog, you can only express yourself with a limited amount of characters, or in Twitter’s case, 140 characters. A character is any type of keyboard input, which includes spaces. So for example, if you were to type in the following:
I just met Timbaland at the Knicks game tonight! I got a picture with him on my myspace profile! Check it out if you like!
You have just written 122 characters.
Now why would one want to use twitter to express something that you can blog about anyway? To put it simply… because you may not choose to blog about small things, but you want the world (or your friends) to know what you are up to without really bugging them. Or you want to share a thought to anyone who will listen. So, you can think of Twitter as a public shout out box. A few things people use Twitter for is:
- A short rant about politics.
- As a “water cooler”. Especially when they work at home.
- Sharing links about interesting sites, news or videos
- Telling people about where they are currently at and what they are doing.
- Or just share a lil’ bit of their life.
Continue reading ‘Hip-Hop Tech: Twitter 101 – The Basics (Part 1 of 3)’
