A guide to Twitter, in tweets

I am now writing my column for YES! Weekly live on Twitter.

I apologize in advance to my “followers” for the dozen “tweets” it’ll take.For those reading this on my Twitter feed Monday morning; this will be reprinted verbatim in the Wednesday edition of the paper I work for.Neat gimmick, eh?For those reading this Wednesday in print, who don’t know what Twitter is... well, I’m about to spent an entire column trying to explain. Essentially, Twitter is a social networking site, although it has more in common with a blog. Except you can’t really comment except with your own Twitter feed. And you can direct “tweets” (new posts) at specific other Twitterers.

So it’s kind of like instant messaging, or texting (you can set it up to post from your phone), or a chat room. Ah, hell... see what I mean? Twitter is perhaps the fastest growing and most inexplicable result of the wave of blogging and networking sites to date. In fact, I and many others rejected in at first. Who wants one more website to check every day, one more think that asks you to update it?And there’s this character limit — the backbone of the thing. 140 tops. There’s even a little counter that ticks off letters as you type, unSee? I went over. Who came up with this, Hemingway? By the way, I made damn sure to spell check Hemingway. This won’t be edited for print.My editor and I decided that was part of the point. You can’t edit Twitter posts (although you can delete them) (a fact I’m sure many a hung-over Twitterer thanks god for. Can you imagine how much trouble you could get in with an IM everyone can see?) So what wore me down? How was I convinced to join the ranks of my fellow OCD attention-mongers? Besides the fact I AM one? The tons of interesting things I’ve seen done with the format. For instance, the interesting and often hilarious feed of @warrenellis.

(by adding the “at” symbol to Warren’s user name, I made it a link on my feed. Mine is @ chrislowrance.) Warren Ellis is a superb comics and novel writer, and also has an overdeveloped sense of the comically depraved. His posts on seasoning his steak with the tears of the cow it was carved from are top notch.#Besides following the tweets of favorite authors, musicians and other celebs, Twitter opens up a whole realm of experimentation.

Dylan Meconis, a cartoonist in Portland, Oregon, recently began @ damejetsam. Basically, it’s an improvisational short story. On her blog, Meconis said that Twitter’s restriction on editing made the format appealing.

An excellent poet and prose writer already, the confined medium suits her, and the story has a wonderful lyrical quality.  Back in the world of journalism, Twitter has quickly been adopted as a practical tool.# As Mallary Jean Tenore wrote for the Poynter Institute last year, despite an early backlash many major newspapers have Twitter feeds. Among them: @nytimes, @cnn, and @oregonian. The publications post breaking news with links to the full story. Here in Greensboro, our only daily paper’s online reporter tweets @ JohnNewsom.

Newsom’s feed scored a point back in May, when a massive storm did heavy damage in the eastern part of the city at the absolute worst time.# Early, early morning. So early it was late for the morning edition. But Newsom was able to tweet the whole thing as the facts came in.# I’m not sure if that’s better than a blog with an RSS feed. Maybe it isn’t. But something about the immediacy of the form attracts people.# And as journalists, we’ve got to go where the readers are.