When I first heard of twitter I was not that impressed. In fact I couldn't even figure out what this thing was good for and they were talking about how it is the worlds next big craze.

I received an invitation to sign up by a friend, but she always sends me stuff like this, then again she's never sent me anything useless- she was the person who gave me the first lead to my current career as a writer- a paid gig that now pays ALL of my bills and then some, and even lead to MUCH more..

Based on her email I decided to check it out. I signed up and read the materials but there was nothing to this... In my eyes they just took that feature out of MySpace where you can put what your currently doing and made a whole site out of it... how is this cool again?

I added one answer (the whole site is based on simply answering one question in 200 characters or less: "What are you doing right now?"). I was so not impressed with this at all.

I didn't see then what I come to realize now.

About 3 months passed and once again I received another "Twitter" email from someone wanting me to join their "following". I ignored it because well, the first impression tends to be a lasting one and I was simply not interested. Then I got a Twitter announcement, apparently now I was on a mailing list with them for signing up sigh..

This time however I read the email and it showed all sorts of things that I didn't see on the site before... The thing is however this time it had dimension. I was a bit confused however as it mentioned all this stuff but I didn't really comprehend how it could be useful. I decided to do some research on this, because on the site I noticed this time that there were a bunch of big names talking about it. (see celebrity name dropping does work!).

I wanted to see what the big deal about this boring little site was, usually when the magazines are endorsing something it is not just some dinky little site. Curious I Googled it and learned a few things about the site. Turns out the site is building all sorts of ways to utilize this simple "following" technology that will allow marketers (that's all we need right?) to track markets.. In a way this seems kind of cool me being a marketer (of a different kind though), because without having to bombard people with advertisements, just using their own words and daily events, marketers can actually bypass the commercial thing and use more potent data.

To them this will be like free research, even surveys they never have to ask people to fill out. I'm sure people who make their twitter page public wouldn't mind especially since it may be the thing that slows down all that spam and commercialism every where.

If you notice on the site not only are their not many features, options or obvious uses for twitter, something else is also missing, at least for now...

There are no banner ads, no google ads, nothing, just sign up and a page you can track your followers (people who want to be updated when you post your latest "what are you doing now" answer.

Now I'm a bit intrigued so I log in and post my current state of being :) and I use the email thing to invite everyone I know... then I leave it alone...

A few days later I get a few posts from family members who joined. I start to see that this is a bit neat as I am essentially tapping into a part of their day that I never had access to without first asking them.

I can see what my brother is doing, my mom, or what they did earlier in the day...they don't expire so you can track back and actually get to know your friends through experiences you'd of never known about! Now I'm captivated-

I Get it now...

I watch the sites video and it all makes more sense... "This could be interresting...", I think.

At this point I have 4 people that I'm following, my mother, father, brother, an old friend Maria, and a person I'm writing for. I start to see how this can really become a great tool to get to know people I associate with on another more personal level. They say it's the little things that count and Twitter is giving people access to the little things.

You get to tell your story as if your sitting in an office and others are observing you, but only what you wish to make public, and people can read them, and get to know you. Friendships can be forged more quickly because people once they meet you if they discover you have a twitter account can follow you then read up on your past actions, posts, etc.. They can see if you are the type of person they'd get along with, someone they can trust or not and so on.

The problem with meeting people online is they never have pictures of themselves and personally I like knowing who I'm working for, talking to, associating with and so on. Pictures are nice and well with twitter you do have the option to not use your picture but I'm finding a lot of people are- just like MySpace.

You can even link people to your favorite sites and thus twitter can drive traffic to your range of friends. Over time you could end up with hundreds of friends and keep in touch virtually by their posts. This doesn't crystallize right away for many until they find a way to use it but for me it's really starting to seem like a great tool in networking, Getting to know people, and keeping in touch!

If someone puts that today is their birthday for example, you can back track (say you meet them 6 months later) and figure out when their birthday is, learn all about what they do all day, see if they spend their day writing all the time, networking, or playing games... it's fascinating to learn about people this way. It's the world we never really had access to before other than on MySpace's piece at the top of your control panel on your friends.

Twitter is set up to track your friends posts and them yours (so you can see who is interested in you by who's following you), you can even make your twitter page untrackable by making it private to only friends, or you can use it to allow seeds to be planted dynamically by others finding you in the public (clicking the "everybody" link in your page shows you world wide "Twits" lol...

I'm just cracking the surface of this concept, but I'm starting to feel how this can be addictive. As you post things your friends can also post their thoughts. It's like tapping into the collective conciouseness of the world, or just your friends. Your friends can see who your following too, so it makes it easy to meet interresting people. "Any friend of Jerrico's is a friend of mine..." can be said here, as you realize that people often befriend others like themselves...

Successful people will start to network with other successful people by virtue of their friends. Unlike myspace this is like real time thought processes, you can network myspace, hubpages, your websites all into this thing in real time too by linking people to them. When you write a hub you can actually say "Writing a hub on Twitter" (which I just announced), and you can see things developing if your friends want to share them.

You get kind of addicted to the attention some give you in their twitter responses, you can directly talk to people too with twitter. It is not yet widespread but its certainly catching on like a cold virus :) only not a bad thing. Sooner or later everyone will be on twitter and services like it (I've noticed a few others using different formats like a real time time line where you scroll the page sideways not up and down).

As I progress I may update this hub to include my new findings but I wanted to put this out there to share with my fans on hubpages and anyone else interrested in asking the question someone in the forum asked "What is the use of twitter?"

This forum post actually made me think about writing this hub:

Forum Post

In trying to find the permalink to that forum post there I discovered that alot of forum posts and hubs have been created on this topic so I'll link you to one of my favorite authors hubs and let you know that typing twitter into hubpages search or forum post will elicit alot of great hubs and in the forum alot of fellow twitters and addresses to twit :) Mine is Jerrico's Twitter page

InspirePub wrote a great hub on Twitter

Have a hubtwiiter day :)

Jerrico