Like many of you, I’m only just making my first forays into the wild and wacky world of social networking.  Last November, I got started on Facebook .  It was a relatively painless process and so far I’m liking it.  But more and more, I’m seeing posts that people are forwarding from Twitter which, of course, peaked my interest.  So, I asked myself, "What exactly is all this Tweeting stuff?"

(To make sure you don’t miss any entries, please consider subscribing by RSS feed or email.  The links are right here on the side  ===> )

Today, I decided to take the plunge and set up a Twitter account and later on, hook it up to my blog. The first thing I did was to search the internet on Twitter tips.  I was pleasantly pleased to stumble upon several very useful Twitter related posts on TipJunkie.  If you are thinking of using Twitter as a promotional tool, I recommend you checkout TipJunkie.

After reading all these tips, I typed twitter.com in my web browser and what did I get?  “Twitter is over capacity.  Please try again later.” 

What the heck?  Five or so minutes later, the site was back up but, still, should I have taken this as some kind of ominous sign?  No, no. Literally millions of people happily use Twitter every day.  Surely, I can too?  Right?  <gulp>

So, with bolstered hope, I went back to the sign up page and began the process of creating my Twitter account.  I entered my name, userID, password, email address, and completed the anti-spam check.  I clicked SUBMIT and then got … “Service Temporarily Unavailable”

What happened?  Do the stars need to be aligned to create a Twitter account?  Do I need to strip, offer up sacrificial virgins and dance in the forest?

Okay, Kristine.  Get a grip.  It’s not an ominous sign from the powers that be.  It’s just a network glitch.  Keep trying.

 I refreshed my web browser and few times and miracles of miracles, Twitter was back up and I was returned to my place in the start-up wizard.  At least it had managed to retain my account details.

Next step – add picture and design profile page.  Sounds simple right?  Well, it should be but my picture is actually a bitmap snapshot of my website and it was too large for Twitter.  After some fiddling, I managed to convert it to a .png file.  Unfortunately, Twitter cropped it so now all you see is Cayne and part of the face from the top of my website.  Note to self: need to get new picture.

Designing the profile page was fun.  I used an application called COLOURlovers to do it.  They offer a wide range of templates and colors that you can customize.

I added a small blurb about myself and then I was ready to add start following people.  And here is where I encountered another problem.  Although many people use their real names on Facebook, on Twitter, people tend to create a UserID and use that making it really hard to locate people you know.  Another thing is that while you may be following someone, they are not following you like in Facebook.  This is both good and bad.  Good because it prevents SPAM connections but bad because you have to do twice the work.  There’s even a tool available for cleaning up your followers list to remove people from your list that you follow but who don’t follow you!

It took me less than two months to make over 230 “friends” on Facebook.  It will be really exciting to see how long it takes to get 230 followers on Twitter.

My Twitter profile is now up and running and I am currently following 55 people and have 2 followers (one whom I don’t know).   I’ll keep you posted of my progress. <hehe>

I've heard lots of good things about Twitter and many writer friends of mine are using it daily.  I'm sure that once I get used to it, I'll love it like everyone else!

In the meantime, do you have a twitter account?  Do you like Twitter?  How does it compare to Facebook?  Do you use them differently?

I love to hear from you, so please continue to post your comments and let me know your Twitter experiences.

If you have a Twitter account, please follow me.

 

Happy Writing,
Kristine