What does TWITTER do?

MMMMMM Donuts!

Somebody has donuts?

Twitter is what old ladies do when they get together.

;)

If you use a hashtag such as #freedonuts, then anyone who seeks out that hashtag (whether they are your follower or not) can see/find your tweet.

Is that what you mean? Or do I not understand your question?

Technically: Twitter is a service that forwards SMS text messages to subscribers who register to receive them.

Business: If sent and received by phone, sender pays for one SMS, per tweet, each subscriber pays for one to recieve it. Since many U.S. mobile users are already paying for unlimited SMS, number of tweets doesn't matter to them. Twitter account holders have the option to initiate and view tweets on Twitter's web site.

Social function: quite varied. Twitter is used to deliver political messages (the White House staff tweets as the President, most campaigns now tweet, but it is typically only their political followers and press that follow the tweets). Celebrities tweet running accounts of daily activities and have huge followings. Small social groups tweet to stay in touch, coordinate, commiserate. Emergency services tweet to coordinate activities and report situations, as Twitter turns around the SMS almost immediately and it goes out as quickly as the mobile phone provider can handle the message (SMS routes on the network that constantly tracks what mobile devices are in a cell and communicating).

I use it to follow news organizations and my sports teams and leagues that I cheer for. I also follow things like my local power company, highway conditions updates, and a few humourous feeds. I have twitter on my phone so I can easily check these things throughout the day. I get breaking weather, power outage updates and breaking news much quicker this way. I like to know what's going in the world so your mileage may vary.

Don't be scared of technology. I'm sure at one time updates through the telegraph seemed like it was all that would ever be needed.

I guess I am more interested in how to "give the donuts away" than in following news and getting info - interested in campers knowing where free donuts are available.

Getting info about stuff is fairly easy, getting folks to know where to get "free donuts" is all I care about. As a metaphor, anyway.

So, to give the free donuts info away, then I'd have to develop a following, or give the info to someone with a high following.

I'm trying to figure out how kids (and adults) all get the same info, so it means they follow the same 'tweeters', not that one 'tweets' and every 'tweeter' reads that specific 'tweet' ...

Well, actually when I read this post, I feel like an idiot asking about "tweets", I mean, I should be asking about "trucks" or "campers" right? How weird is our vocabulary as related to the web world. Too Weird to fathom.

We live in Eastern Washington State, and we have wildland fires that are burning thousand of acres every day. I use TweetDeck to track updated information on fires, road closures and other breaking news.

My columns as of this morning are:

Chelan
Okanongan
#wawildfire
#Winthrop
#Wolverinefire

The information that's being posted are tweets by people that have first hand knowledge of what's going on, plus videos and photos. I'll be the first to admit that not all of it is useful, but there's more than enough current information to make this a very useful app.

I can reconfigure columns on the fly. If a new fire breaks out I simply start a new column with the search term, and I'm reading updates in seconds.

Floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, snow storms are all reported via Tweets. I don't send Tweets, but I use what others send to capture current events.

I also track WaDOT (Washington DOT) and the local Chelan County Emergency Management.

This app. is the fastest way to get breaking information.

If you are picky about who you follow then it can be very handy. I follow my local news traffic anchor and she sends out tweets on traffic situations all morning and afternoon.

Call it RSS on steroids

I also follow my favorite sports teams and can get up to the minute information when I want it.

Lots of spam and stupid junk on Twitter too... You just have to be careful.

Thanks!

Jeremiah

SO, if one camper had unlimited free donuts and wanted to share with other campers, s/he would open a twitter account, and write "free donuts at wwww.xxx.com" and no one would read it because s/he would have no followers until it developed a bunch of 'donut-eating' campers over a period of time.

But, if you know someone that has a large 'following' and sent that person a note saying "tweet this", and s/he did it. Every one of that 'following' might or would read that note ... and suddenly, the donuts would begin disappearing.

Does that explain how it works, basically.