I've noticed a lot of new followers on Twitter recently, and most of them are probably looking at the thing and wondering 'OK, I'm here, what do I do now?' I thought it might help to provide a few pointers that should make that first day a bit more enjoyable and productive.
If you like background reading you could try my blog posts on using Twitter in libraries (you'll have seen this already if you subscribe to the LIS-LINK mailing list) or choosing who to follow on Twitter. Alternatively try 'A guide to twitter' which provides some useful hints and tips on getting started, from Lost art of blogging or CNet's 'Newbie's guide to Twitter' which will take you through some basics; it's comprehensive so there's no need for me to explain basic functionality.
If you're the type of person who likes to jump in and start looking for people to follow you could start withTwitter's follow suggestions tool, but quite frankly that's pretty dire. Better might be to look at the visual 'friends network' tool to see who your friends are following. You could alternatively try Twellow which takes a category approach to individuals or use the Twitter name search option (which also isn't great either!)
You may be a 'what's in it for me' person, and if that's the case I'd suggest heading over to the Twitter search engine to see which people are talking about subjects that are close to your heart. You can then decide to follow them (or not!) or jump in and start chatting. Alternatively, try clicking on the 'Find People' option top right to see if you already have friends and colleagues who are on the service.
If you're not any of those people, you might just want to sit back, follow a few people and see where Twitter takes you. I can't offer much advice here, since the people I follow may not interest you, but you can always take a look at them if you like! However, there are a few that you might be tempted by:
http://twitter.com/ICHCheezburger if you are into LOLcats
http://twitter.com/guardiantech to keep up to date with what's happening in the tech world
http://twitter.com/ukeig for obvious reasons (if you don't know what they are, you can ignore this one!)
http://twitter.com/stephenfry who now has almost 86,000 followers - help tip him over the 100,000 mark!
Finally, if you really want to utilise Twitter to the maximum, you'll want to check out the many hundreds of applications you can use. Many sites to choose from, but I'll suggest Twitterapps as one of the best. Of course, if you have any questions just ask them - either here in the comments field or generally at Twitter itself.
If you like background reading you could try my blog posts on using Twitter in libraries (you'll have seen this already if you subscribe to the LIS-LINK mailing list) or choosing who to follow on Twitter. Alternatively try 'A guide to twitter' which provides some useful hints and tips on getting started, from Lost art of blogging or CNet's 'Newbie's guide to Twitter' which will take you through some basics; it's comprehensive so there's no need for me to explain basic functionality.
If you're the type of person who likes to jump in and start looking for people to follow you could start withTwitter's follow suggestions tool, but quite frankly that's pretty dire. Better might be to look at the visual 'friends network' tool to see who your friends are following. You could alternatively try Twellow which takes a category approach to individuals or use the Twitter name search option (which also isn't great either!)
You may be a 'what's in it for me' person, and if that's the case I'd suggest heading over to the Twitter search engine to see which people are talking about subjects that are close to your heart. You can then decide to follow them (or not!) or jump in and start chatting. Alternatively, try clicking on the 'Find People' option top right to see if you already have friends and colleagues who are on the service.
If you're not any of those people, you might just want to sit back, follow a few people and see where Twitter takes you. I can't offer much advice here, since the people I follow may not interest you, but you can always take a look at them if you like! However, there are a few that you might be tempted by:
http://twitter.com/ICHCheezburger if you are into LOLcats
http://twitter.com/guardiantech to keep up to date with what's happening in the tech world
http://twitter.com/ukeig for obvious reasons (if you don't know what they are, you can ignore this one!)
http://twitter.com/stephenfry who now has almost 86,000 followers - help tip him over the 100,000 mark!
Finally, if you really want to utilise Twitter to the maximum, you'll want to check out the many hundreds of applications you can use. Many sites to choose from, but I'll suggest Twitterapps as one of the best. Of course, if you have any questions just ask them - either here in the comments field or generally at Twitter itself.
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