What does TWITTER do?

I don't subscribe to many people/companies mostly national parks, blm, and the like. However, for up to the minute, on the ground news, you really can't beat twitter.

I have been using it all summer to track wildfire information and updates.
I used it last winter to find out snow closures, major accidents, and the like.
I used it during Hurricane Sandy.

People and news stations tweet updates about tornadoes, storms, riots - any instant news you need you can find on twitter. It is great when you full time and need local information but have no access to a good local news station.

Trackrig wrote:
It wastes time and most of them are ignored or never read.

Bill

Excellent explanation. Short and to the point.
No donuts needed. :)

OK, I'll give a pro-Twitter answer.

- you subscribe to a person who tweets. If no one subscribes to you, then no one reads the tweet.

useless to find out if someone is eating a #donut but handy as a news feed if you subcribe to news/sports journalist or broadcast.

Twitter is similar to Facebook. People subscribe to your account and when you tweet it sends it out to them. Your account like FB can be set to private if not you're tweets are public. The plus side to Twitter is text is short, 140 characters unless its in a private message, so you won't get huge long paragraphs to read. The plus to Twitter is as you know Facebook plays a lot of games as to what messages your friends may or may not see, Twitter doesn't do that. You will see everything they post. I don't think you'll see as much advertizing or garbage stuff either.

I've never used it but my understanding is that people subscribe to follow certain people's tweets, So if you send out tweet, only those that subscribe to your tweets will get it.

It wastes time and most of them are ignored or never read.

Bill