Twitter: Social Networking with 140 Characters or Less

Twitter has the advantage of being an excellent tool for spreading information quickly. Compared to Facebook, the social information shared on Twitter is more timely and viral. This fact has been demonstrated well with the death of Michael Jackson and the protests during the Iranian elections in 2009.

Meeting new people on Twitter can be significantly easier than on other social networking sites. Unlike Facebook and LinkedIn, which require you to reveal a lot of personal information, Twitter is based on open lines of communication between Twitter members. Allowing strangers to access your activities has fewer consequences than on other social networking sites, where privacy may be of greater concern.

As you add followers, however, your ability to manage all of your tweets may falter. Members often quit out of sheer frustration. But there are alternatives to using the Twitter website.

Most serious Twitter users make use of specialized software that can combine one or more Twitter accounts, allowing you to organize followers into lists and columns, filter content, and show popular trends in feeds. Nearly 2,000 different programs exist, ranging across most operating systems. For desktop computing, try TweetDeck, the most popular program, which can integrate Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking accounts.

If you want to tweet with your smartphone, you have a plethora of options for the Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Android platforms.

One other thing that may enrich your experience on Twitter is the Twitter bot. Twitter bots are somewhat unique in that they are programmed for a specific purpose. Some bots like @getforecast respond on command; send a tweet with your city or zip code and it returns a weather forecast. Other bots like VayuFedex require that you send a direct message: send your FedEx tracking number and receive a status report. Some bots you must follow. Once you follow a bot like TV Guide, you'll receive updates on daily TV listings.

Little personal information is associated with your account, so Twitter has few privacy features. But there are a couple of things you can do to control who see your tweets.

Go to the "Settings" option in the top navigation, and under the "Account" tab find the section at the bottom that says "Protect my tweets". (Here's what it looks like.) Place a checkmark on this option to allow only approved followers to view your tweets. Keep in mind that you're severely handicapping the intent of Twitter by doing this.

The other thing you can do is selectively block specific followers from accessing your tweets. For example, if you're being harassed by a follower and no longer want that person to read your tweets, you can block them. To do this from the Twitter Web site, find the person in your list of followers and place your cursor over the right-most button. A list of options appears. Find the "Block" option and select it. In the example below, the member wants to block janesmith from seeing tweets.

While privacy issues aren't as significant, security concerns are extremely important to Twitter. The site has had several issues with security in January, May, and December of 2009. Most security issues on Twitter involve hijacking of user accounts. This typically occurs when someone clicks a link in a tweet that leads to a site with malware.

Software tools exist that identify links to dangerous content. Security company Finjan offers a free browser add-on that assigns a safety rating to a URL you may encounter. Additionally, Kapersky Lab's security products have a built-in tool that blocks malware associated with malicious tweets. The best rule of thumb is to run anti-virus and anti-malware programs with up-to-date security files, and never give out your username and password to anyone.

Despite security issues, Twitter has a lot to offer. While it may not be a social networking tool for everyone, learning how to use it effectively will make for a more enjoyable and safe experience.

Last update: Feb 22, 2010