ZasBlog 
Podionaut Twittah
Post posted by Sacha on March 29th, 2009 at 15:43
Hi tweople!
Twitter is such a fun tool. It’s definitely very hard for someone like me, because you have to cram anything you want to say in just 140 characters. Boy, that’s HARD. But it’s so very cool when I can use exactly 140 chars! I love that. Of course, that is without cheating on the characters. So, no using extra letters in a word just to get to 140. The messages where I use exactly 140 chars are extra special to me :)
Besides twitter challenging me to think in short message flashes, it also challenges me in understanding how it works with followers. I still haven’t figured that out completely. I do understand that I can follow people, so I can read their messages. And people can follow me, so these people (the following) read what I write. However, I can’t write a message to somebody that doesn’t follow me back. Unless I’m replying to a message they sent first and only if I use the _reply_ button in my twitter client. Are you following me (yeah, pun intended!) ?!?
I wonder how people (I call ‘m tweople) that follow a lot of other tweople can keep track of all their messages. I can get kinda crazy when the messages start piling up in my twitter client when I haven’t checked it in an hour. I really want to read all of it, because I want to know what everybody is saying! Don’t wanna miss that one big message, you know. And my list only contains 27 tweople at the moment. At some moments, it’s very easy to keep track because when I get out of bed here in Holland, most of my list has just gone to bed (US). But when they wake up, they all start twittering and twattering. Especially the authors. They lllllove to write, it’s in their blood. I love that, but some days it’s just a big message overflow to me.
So, how do tweople keep track of everybody? I have absolutely no idea how those #hashtags work and I don’t know if I want to know. I think it’s a big secret, because I haven’t found a cool short list of twitter tips (twips?) online. Just like the reply-to option, that is being kept secret too! I had to find out by accident that it really IS possible to write a message to a non-follower. Okay, I’ll explain how I found that out, because that’s another thing about twitter.
There are tweople with bots that search for specific words being used by anyone on twitter. Or tweople search for the words themselves, possibly. It’s just a lot of work IMO. Anyway. For example, somebody or some botty is looking for the word ‘carrot’ because this person just loves anything about carrots. And I twitt “Today I heard that joke again about the carrot cake. How old is that joke?” Then the bott picks up the carrot and puts me on the following list. Because if I talk about carrots, I must be a very interesting person and who would want to miss a word I say? I wouldn’t! Well, it’s a way to get your following list filled, I guess.
I mostly follow authors of the podionovels I’m listening. But that’s a whole new story, I’ll talk about that another time. Right now, I have to get used to the daylight savings time change we had last night. We just lost 60 minutes last night. 60 minutes gone. Poof. I weep.
In case you want to know how I – girl of many many words – can write messages in 140 chars or less, add me on twitter. I’m zzacha. If you talk about carrots, I may follow you back ;P
