Why I Love Twitter

(Wee birdie sketch from Gaping Void)

I've previously spoken about how I find Twitter useful, but the deeper I get involved in the Twitter community (and I believe it is a community, not a micro-blogging platform or whatever else anyone has described it has) I discover many, many more reasons as to why I love it.

Firstly, I find more and more that I am part of the community. When I first joined Twitter, I was unsure about it. But now, after warm welcomes from the people I started to follow, I now do the same back to new followers of me - and most of them, especially the new ones, a grateful for the warm welcome.

Secondly, it is now one of my top resources when I need to find out something or gauge an opinion. I put a question out there and I usually get about 3 or 4 replies that, if not answering the question there and then, point me in the right direction. It's like the number of contacts I can ask for help has just multiplied a hundred times.

Thirdly, it is one of the most inventive and fun communities I'm involved in. Just some recent examples include:

• Chinposin - A project to get people chinholdin - basically posing with a hand on their chin, but so much more. Why not make it a Fun thing for Friday on Twitter. Twitter users just need to make their avatar pic a chin pose and then follow @chinposin. Take a look at the Chinposin blog for more info.
• The Twitter Mexican Wave - @Thayer ha the brainwave of creating a Mexican Wave where various twits tweeted their own wave. There are some great photos of the results on @Thayer's blog and aggregated together at Terraminds.
• Inanimate objects are on Twitter - for example, Tower Bridge is on Twitter. Developed by Infovore, Tower Bridge can now tell you when it's opening and closing, what vessel is passing through, and which way that vessel is going. The times are determined by taking the scheduled time for the “lift” and subtracting five minutes for the opening, and adding five minutes for closing - the official site suggests that, at rush hour, lifts should take five minutes to open and close tops.

Also, once you get involved for a reasonable amount of time, Twitter becomes a very friendly place to be. There are constant tweets of various halloos to other Twitters, and repeated mentions of twits meeting up offline in the real world. for example, @bmcmichael's latest tweet was that she was taking the day off for her birthday. And what happened today? A torrent of happy birthday messages leading to yet more happy birthday messages as other people in the Twitter community picked up on the fact that it was @bmcmichael's birthday.

Lastly, unlike other social networks, there are virtually no spammers. Facebook bombards everyone with application requests ("Bob Jones wants to find out "Are You interested?!?" - "Er, no..."). But with Twitter, because it's like an RSS feed - you choose to read it - and nobody so far has worked out how to spam a feed, there is no spam.

Unless you count the A-lister Twitters - characterised by a huge volume of posts per day, follow a small number of people yet have a large number of followers and rarely engage in conversation - as @wadds discusses over at his Tech PR blog.

As an article in today's Guardian argues, "On Twitter you can choose to follow anyone whose tweets catch your eye; and similarly, unless you limit your tweets only to your friends, anyone can follow you even if you choose not to follow them. Not everyone follows everyone who follows them. You follow?"

So that's a rundown of why I love Twitter and here's a few links as to why others do too. If you're not on Twitter already, get involved and tell us how you get on - you can follow me (@benrmatthews) and I'd really like to hear why you other twits like using it.