Some friends and a lot people’s been asking me internet questions. So, for my first venture, I’m doing a three part series of Twitter-related posts introducing Twitter to the hip-hop community. It’s a website that looks odd to many of us, and make even the most hardcore of tech users and hip-hop fans paranoid.
Here’s a brief overview of what to expect in this post:
- What is Twitter and why it’s so popular.
- What Twitter is not (aka stalker fears)
- How people use Twitter
- How to get and set up a Twitter account
- Breaking Down Twitter.
If you would like to see what the other posts will cover, scroll to the bottom of this post for an overview of the next two posts.
What’s a Twitter & why is it so popular?
In simple, layman’s terms, Twitter is a miro-blogging website. And what’s a “mirco-blog”? Take away mirco, and you’ll get “blog”, like Thought Remixer (a Wordpress-Powered Site), Wordpress, Blogger, or even the MySpace blogs. The only difference is that with a micro-blog, you can only express yourself with a limited amount of characters, or in Twitter’s case, 140 characters. A character is any type of keyboard input, which includes spaces. So for example, if you were to type in the following:
I just met Timbaland at the Knicks game tonight! I got a picture with him on my myspace profile! Check it out if you like!
You have just written 122 characters.
Now why would one want to use twitter to express something that you can blog about anyway? To put it simply… because you may not choose to blog about small things, but you want the world (or your friends) to know what you are up to without really bugging them. Or you want to share a thought to anyone who will listen. So, you can think of Twitter as a public shout out box. A few things people use Twitter for is:
- A short rant about politics.
- As a “water cooler”. Especially when they work at home.
- Sharing links about interesting sites, news or videos
- Telling people about where they are currently at and what they are doing.
- Or just share a lil’ bit of their life.
Continue reading ‘Hip-Hop Tech: Twitter 101 – The Basics (Part 1/3)’
Before You Send Me A Forward, PLEASE READ THIS!
Dear Reader…
Welcome to my site, Thought Remixer. This is a hip-hop/social commentary site. However, I decided to do this public service announcement because I’m getting e-mails with forwards from friends and strangers (that means you). This is rather an annoying thing, so I’m going to educate you on this matter of sending me (and anyone with an e-mail address) forwards…
Here it goes…
DON’T DO IT!
It’s not that I don’t like receiving messages from you. I love it.
Matter of fact, I forward things to friends all the time. When there’s an article, a job listing, a prime real estate, a cool web site, or even a youtube joke, I will forward it to my friends. One on One. My e-mail address is no big secret, but I don’t want just anyone getting access to me. So, refer to the following site for what not to send and so on. Plus, I’m a geek. I know how to protect my computer from ALL sorts of viruses and Google Apps make sure those bad boys are NEVER get into my e-mail box. So, thanks, but no thanks.
http://www.thanksno.com/
If you MUST send me that joke that is probably in my spam folder, or the pictures of the latest LOLcats or whatever else to a lot of people… please use BBC…
http://bccplease.com/
Or use myspace’s bulletin section. When I’m really bored, I’ll check there.
And finally…
The Internet Soapbox! — powered by flowgo.com
Now… forward this post to 10 of your friends so they can laugh at my bad grammar skills and leave comments on them. While I’m pretty sure I didn’t made any mistakes, one of y’all will point it out to me.
P.S. I will not point out who’s been guilty of the crime… but I can bet you SOMEONE on my links will pay dearly… because I’m forwarding this post to ALL of his/her friends. *evil laughter*