I woke up this morning, urgently checked my mail as I am used to, and there was this message waiting for me: `Kevin Rudd is following you`. Yeah, that was funny to see. LOL.
I signed up to Twitter a few days ago, because I was interested what this social network is all about, that everyone is talking about these days, even in the news. More and more celebrities are joining this network.
So I am tweeting as well, but to tell you the truth, I do not now for how long. I am not interested in doing this all the time. And you know what? I am not alone with this. According to a research around 60 percent of twewbies -new people to Twitter- do not use Twitter after the first month. I can understand this, because I also do not use social networks as much and as intensively as many others, but this time I was really interested why it is different from other social networks, such as the Hungarian Iwiw, the Dutch Hyves or the most famous Facebook .
If you only look at the benefits or the positive side of this site, Twitter can be useful and funny. And why not see the positive side only? Yeah, public social networks can be dangerous, but this time I do not want to be more paranoid. So let`s talk about the good things.
You can make your profile on Twitter and you even can have ‘friends’. The big difference is that you can make connection with celebrities or companies much easier. Because you click on celebrities to follow them, does not me
an you know them personally or you are friends. It means only that you are `following` them. Mutually, they can follow you as well, so they become your `followers`. Why they want to follow you or be followed by you if they have absolutely no idea who you are? The reason is very simple: it is a really good marketing tool for them to build closer relationship and/or sell you some products much easier…
Basically, what you are following is a short message consisting of a maximum of 140 characters, about what people are doing during their day. It is like: `I am going to the cinema tonight`. People like reading what others are doing at the same time. What they are eating, what kind of situation they are in, what they are wearing, etc. I am not sure that this is true for everyone, I think there are more important things in the world, but on the other hand I can imagine it. You use to ask your family members or friends as well what they did or what they like, don`t you? And if you can not ask but would like to, it is easy to read it almost secretly, isn`t it?
So in this way, Twitter is a so called `microblog`, because you can send your short messages, like you do in sms or text-messages, but it is going to reach a broader public on Internet, not to mention, that it is free these days. It is a bit similar to MSN where people use to make a short notice next to their names -seen by their friends-, but I recon it is not changing so often.
For me the biggest advantage is that it is an easy way of getting news-updates. On a separate page, you can see all the messages of persons or companies you are following, ordered in time. I started following the Hungarian “Index” and the Sydney Morning Herald, as I noticed that they are continuously sending their latest news headlines. It was funny that the SMH immediately 
replied and started following me, but I am still waiting for Index, they need a wake-up call. If they only knew what they loose by not following me…
So I have four followers with Kevin Rudd: the Sydney Morning Herald, an SMH-blogger Joe Hildebrand, a figure that is changing his personality all the time, and now Kevin Rudd, the REAL ONE!!! Oh, if you have not heard from him, he is the prime minister of Australia!!!
I say the REAL ONE, because if I search for Kevin Rudd at this moment, the search engine gives 13 results. Among these KevinRuddPM is the real nickname, and it is not Kevin Rudd, just because the so called ‘squatters’ already hijacked his identity.
Not everyone is real however, it seems unlikely that the prime minister sits in front of his computer because of this. They employ someone for this purpose, the so called ‘ghost-twitter’. Hugh Jackman embarrassed himself recently, when his “ghost-twitter” was talking about the Opera Center instead of the Opera House. This looks quite bad for someone from Australia, so to save his image after these harmful 140 characters, he donated 100 thousand dollar to charity a few days later. From now on, I also will be very careful when writing something on Twitter…
Like on other sites, there are also some people here hiding behind the name of someone who is famous, and abuse it by writing nonsense. Today there was an article about this in the SMH. In general there is quite a lot of news about Twitter or Facebook, as a kind of advertisement, telling which celebrity reached a million followers or who the latest famous member is. There are also articles with a warning, how people can use these sites for wrong reasons. But there are also many success stories.
Recently I read, there was a smart company (SR7): that immediately adapted to these new developments they are doing research for other companies about the behaviour of their employees on social networks. Many companies are afraid (maybe with a good reason), that employees can damage the image of the company, if 
they are writing negative things on these sites. To prevent this, Telstra came up with new regulations, about how their employees should deal with the social networks.
A well known recent case for example is Domino Pizza, when two employees uploaded a few pictures, about how they are ‘polluting’ the pizzas, before bringing them to the customers. This was all I needed! I hate it, if you are so vulnerable; you indeed never know what exactly you are eating…
It became clear, that many companies cannot really use this kind of damaging accidents and they sacked people because of their Facebook messages. Attila read somewhere yesterday, that a person got fired because she stayed home sick, saying that she cannot work, because she is not allowed to use a computer. But then she uncovered herself while writing on Facebook…
So be careful!
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May 6th, 2009 at 18:15
Hi, good post. I have been pondering this topic,so thanks for sharing. I will likely be subscribing to your site. Keep up the good posts
May 7th, 2009 at 5:51
Hi `With This Diet I Lost 30 Pounds…`,
Thank you! We would be glad if you subscribed to our newsletter. At this time this means only that you will be notified shortly about our new posts.
Anyway, congrats to your achivement!
Emma
May 12th, 2009 at 0:04
igen, ezert mar erdemes twitterezni! jo cikk es magyarul)):
http://www.technogracia.hu/2009/05/miert-twitterezz/
May 12th, 2009 at 1:46
Check this out!This is a very good article about `how to use Twitter`. http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/05/10/twitter-demystified-for-business-users/
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