Finally I've got my database connection fixed. Wow! Must say the technical support at osprohosting.com is quite good. Settled everything in an hour. 1 ticket a couple of exchanges and it's done. Had to redo this post so many times because of bad db connection.
Since I've started at My Fat Pocket, I've been trying to find out what I can do with Twitter. 140 characters. It's like SMS only on the web. What's so useful about something like that. So I went about doing my research. First thing I did was to embed the Twitter widget into MFP. The original use of Twitter was to share the URLs from the site but then that's the job for Feedburner and RSS not Twitter.
Bianca, our editor decided to use our Twitter for her random notes and finds for our readers. Basically stuff you find interesting and want to convey to our readers but you didn't want to write a full article or create a page with weblinks. She did that for a while, when the schedule wasn't that busy and after a while tweets only came in once every 3-4 days as she couldn't spend time scouring the net for interesting stuff anymore. Not to mention Twitter has a larger use than broadcast of short messages.
I googled and read extensively on Twitter and the uses. From the hype of first to a million (Ashton vs CNN), to news reporting, to price tracking and a whole dozen other uses of asking a group of trusted advisors for help (Macdonald's Taka, Where's the nearest toilet?, 500Gb HDD, $180 should I buy?) and other stuff like that. So how does that happen? The simple use of tags.
@ - to reply to someone
# - to tag the particular item to similar topics.
So right now to see everyone who has written a message specifically written to me, I'll search the tag @mingspot. Simple! However do remember that typing @mingspot does not prevent the others from viewing that post when they visit your profile.
If I need to send myfatpocket a message. I'll say "@myfatpocket Hey!" and only myfatpocket will have this message on their twitter.
What's wrong with email, which allows so many more characters? Actually I'm pretty sure an email list would do just as well, only thing is people change emails, reply to different threads and all so sometimes it does get a little messy. Not to mention the numerous apps that work with your mobile phone to make this checking and updating easy because it's 140 characters. 20 less than the SMS.
The target of mobile phones was a really good move. I suppose people just loved SMS when it first came out and now Twitter. Start following www.twitter.com/mingspot. I'm even giving up feeds for this site because if you really want to follow what I'm writing, just follow my twitter.