In a comment to my previous post about Facebook, JakeT also ponders the signficance of Twitter and why I use it. Although Twitter is different things to different people, I’ll just describe the things I like about it and what it does for me.

I follow about 80 people and about 70 or 80 people follow me. Most of the Twitter users I follow are people I “know” from Linux, Tech and Podcast circles. “Know” meaning people I’ve listened to, chatted with or subscribed to in the past.

This means I get a fairly steady stream of twitter posts from people I admire and people I find interesting. This usually results in some interesting links, news on what people are doing and working on, notification of events, questions about various things, technical problems they are having etc. Lots of stuff, most of it interesting, lots of it not.

It’s not like Google Reader where I feel inclined to read everything that passes by. If I see something interesting, great. If I don’t, then oh well.

Now if someone really wants me to see something, they can use the @username method. This will put it in my replies list. However, I also use the track mechanism to track certain terms - one of which is my username. So any posts (by anybody at all) that contain my username also come my way. I find the track mechanism much more useful than the traditional ‘follow’ mechanism. But I use both.

So what do I get out of Twitter?

1. Twitter gives me a good source for more real-time information. Breaking news about anything tech or otherwise often show up in my stream. Usually this means links to news stories or blog posts.

2. I can use it to help solve problems I might be having, by soliciting solutions from all those people who follow me or track the terms I might be using. Having problems with a certain device after upgrading to Hardy Heron? If you follow a lot of Linux-y types, you might post the question and get pointers to some good info if others are having similar problems.

3. Conversely, I can help out someone by providing the answer or helpful information to those asking for it. Kind of like a support forum, but more real-time and spur of the moment.

4. It can give me a different insight into what other people are doing. This can be interesting. It can help me make useful connections with people I might never normally meet.

5. It can help build community around things. For instance, if a podcaster is holding a live streaming show and wants his audience to check it out, he can Twitter it and reach some of those people. I’ve seen this in action several times with various podcasters I follow.

Those are the main things I get out of using Twitter. But not everyone is looking for the same things. It’s not necessarily for everybody. But I find it fun and useful.

I don’t find it very intrusive either. If I’m busy, I don’t feel guilty ignoring it since things don’t seem to “pile up”. When you log onto Twitter it’s not like it tells you you’ve got 1500 items waiting. There’s very little guilt involved, and that’s refreshing - for me anyway.

It’s kind of a like a CB radio of sorts. Or maybe IRC without having to be in a chat room. It’s still very primitive, but with simple tools like ‘track’ and GChat (the Gtalk client within Gmail), it becomes quite usable for me. It doesn’t replace anything I already use (Gmail, IRC, and Google Reader), but just adds another source of info to interact with.

If you’re interested, you can follow me on Twitter. I also recently added a sidebar widget showing a few of my recent Twitter posts along with a link to subscribe.