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Microblogging platforms such as Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, Friendfeed and others give you a way to send a message to friends, family and even business associates and clients usually with a 140 character limit on the message.
To a few thousand loyal users, using this type of platform is an everyday occurrence, but to most users of the Internet today, they have no idea what these platforms are or how to use them. Our discussion will focus on Twitter who is pretty much the forerunner in this field of microblogging. In fact, Twitter has almost become an Instant Messenger of sorts, thanks to the Direct Message feature that allows users to send private messages to other users, instantly. The replies feature allows a user to send a reply aimed at another user simply by inserting the @username within the message itself. Unlike the Direct Message feature, replies can be seen by the public timeline.
Along with the main Twitter application site, has bred a number of other “Twitter Applications” that support and utilize the main site features. For example, for WordPress users, there are a number of plugins such as Twitter Tools, that allow you to not only post your latest tweets on your blog, but also to send tweets to your Twitter account instantly when you make a blog post.
Tweetburner is a site that came along that allows a Twitter user to track URLS that are sent using their shortening service. Of course, Twitter uses TinyURL to automatically shorten long or lengthy URLS that you post allowing you to stay within the 140 character limit easier, but no tracking like Tweetburner has.
With so many microblogging platforms out there now, along came Ping.fm, a service that allows you to send tweets to not only Twitter, but almost 20 other services, simultaneously. There is an associated WordPress plugin called pingPressFm that will work like Twitter Tools (mentioned above) that will post your tweets automatically to Ping.fm when you make a blog post.
Now, Twitter started as a way for friends and family to know “what you are doing” right now, instead of e-mailing them or using another instant message service. This quickly became a way for businesses to contact potential customers and current clients and “keep them up to date” with their latest products and services. Of course, with anything good, has to have a few bad apples. With all of this new found messaging strength for business, came spam. Not just a little, but lots! Enough that Twitter had to go through and clean house and create a Twitter Spammer type feature that allows Twitter users to let Twitter know who is doing the spamming so that the spammer accounts can be suspended or removed.
One great feature that Twitter has is the ability to follow one or more users and see what they are doing. You can use the Twitter web site for this or there are a lot of Twitter Apps like TweetDeck, Twirl, and others that will give you a desktop app view of your Twitter Account Timeline. For everyone that you follow, when they send a tweet, the Twitter App will show it on your desktop app. For example, I use TweetDeck, so I can see what the almost 200 people I follow are saying and doing, round the clock! I can also Direct Message (DM) someone or reply to a tweet and even send out a tweet, right from my desktop. A desktop app isn’t for everyone, but if you want to keep up with your timeline, it is a simple and easy way to do this.
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