The Twitter Book

The Twitter Book by Tim O'Reilly

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I don't get Twitter, after reading this book I understand it a little better but still don't really see the attraction to the service that because of it's limitations (160 characters, no RSS feeds anymore) forces users to learn or guess at abbreviations to understand what people are talking about. I'm not a facebook user either but that's more about privacy concerns then obections to the service. I'm on Google+ because Google already had my info through gmail, blogger, docs, calendar. But I wanted to understand Twitter and this quick read helps with that and to be fair to Twitter and Tim O'Reilly I'm going to try his guaranteed method. Been at it 3 days now and while I not as confused, I haven't really been entertained or as informed as G+ has in the same time frame.

This is from the first chapter

Try it for three weeks or your money back—guaranteed!
People often say that they dip into Twitter once or twice and don't get it. Which is
understandable since the real value of Twitter becomes evident only after you've followed
a few accounts for a while and have absorbed their rhythms.
If you're having trouble seeing what all the fuss is about, try this tactic:
follow at least a few promising accounts, and then for three weeks, log into Twitter daily
(ideally using one of the life-changing programs we describe in Chapter 2), catch up on
messages and click around for five to ten minutes. Every few days, make sure to check the
trending topics (described in Chapter 2). Finally, spend 30 minutes one day running a few
searches (also described in Chapter 2) to see what you can learn from the discussions on
Twitter.
At the end of three weeks, you'll have spent five hours total giving a fair shake to the most
important new communications tool we've seen since email. (If it still doesn't work for you,
pass this book along to a friend.)

If your interested in learning about social media in general or Twitter in particular I'd recommend this book



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