Twitter is the first social networking tool that I really like and also find genuinely useful. It exists somewhere between IM and blogging. Messages can be up to 120 characters. They go out to whoever is following you. Right now, I follow about 50 people and about the same number follow me.
It’s free, of course. You can tell it to track certain words or phrases too, like “Obama” or “climate change.” You can view your tweets on the Twitter website, with IM, or on your cell phone via texting. You can send snippets of blog posts (or any RSS) to Twitter with Twitter Feed. So, the first 120 characters of posts here automatically get sent to Twitter without me doing anything.
Why is this useful? One reason is because I frequently now learn about breaking news on Twitter first. Plus it’s fascinating and fun to see what everyone is doing. I follow tech geeks like Scoble as well as financial bloggers like Paul Kedrosky. There’s also BBC breaking news and lots more.
I’m polizeros on Twitter. To follow me, just click Follow under my picture.
Read/Write Web has an excellent list of the growing list of Twitter clients while Twitter has a wiki with lots more third-party Twitter tools.