John Cade

You know - or maybe you don’t - I don’t call Meredith by ‘Mere’ very often.  I’ve always loved her name and though Mere is much easier to say and fits her personality, for some reason I can’t bring myself to do it.

However, there always comes a time for change.  And that time is now.  All thanks to my little friend known as Twitter and his limits on username length.

Ever since Meredith and I met, one of the things I have loved most about her is her one liners.  No matter the subject, mood, time of day, or setting - she always has a way of putting things into her own words.  I’ve always wanted to keep a log of her quotes, but have never gotten around to it - until now.  Twitter seems to be the perfect tool for this.  No matter where we are, I no longer have to worry about having a pen and paper in hand to capture the things that she says.  I can simply text it to Twitter!  The added bonus is - you guys can join in the fun too!  Though Twitter doesn’t allow me enough space to explain the context of her quotes, they are pretty easy to figure out most of the time.

Alas, I present to you, twitter.com/meresoneliners.

Disclaimer:  I’m definitely not the first person to post about this topic.  However, many of the posts you will find are aimed at web and marketing professionals.  My goal is to inform the general population about a few basic, useful things Twitter can accomplish.

I thought the social networking revolution hit an all-time low when I heard about Twitter. I don’t care what your dog ate for breakfast. So why would I bother following you and your too frequent and unimportant life updates on Twitter? What a terrible idea. However, I became increasingly intrigued after seeing people use it effectively as an outlet for self-promotion and marketing. Thus, I joined the fray and created my own Twitter profile. And the updates began.

From my limited experiences, I compiled a list of things Twitter can accomplish for anyone.

1. Keep you informed - Believe it or not, I find myself looking to Twitter for breaking news. After all, you can follow the major news networks, who automatically post to Twitter when they update their headlines.
2. Make you and your content known - I can’t tell you how many people I have discovered on Twitter that actually have something interesting or important to say. People that I would have never been interested in otherwise. They are effectively gaining an audience through the use of simple, one-line updates.  Twitter helps bloggers and site owners drive traffic to their sites, which is great for increased paged views and therefore higher advertising income.
3. Act as a lightweight RSS reader - Many of the feeds I am pulling into my desktop RSS reader actively ‘tweet’ when the site it originates from has updated content. With the integration of Twitterrific and Growl on my Mac, I can get updates without opening my reader and losing real estate on my screen (although it would be even more beneficial if Growl displayed clickable links).
4. Provide a forum for feedback - This point is two fold. By using the @username syntax, twitter users can reply to what others have said. When you’re following major corporations, this is a great way to give them feedback or let them know of any problems or concerns you may have. Believe it or not, it can quickly grab their attention; especially if your tweet puts them at risk of being exposed in some way. Secondly, it gives others an easy, quick way of responding to you and providing you with feedback on any new content you have informed them about.
5. Help you find answers - Got a question?  About anything?  There’s a good chance you’ll get a pretty hasty response from your followers.