What are you doing now? Tweeting of course (Twitter.com)

Member Name: phillipsdj

Product:	Twitter.com
Date:	02/07/09 (38 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Limited to 140 characters keeps it brief and easy

Disadvantages: VERY addictive! Can't always cope with all the users.

The creators of Twitter claim that it was based on just one question: What are you doing now?

To be honest the above question does sum it up perfectly, Twitter has taken the status update function of Facebook and somehow made it even more addictive. Basically, you get 140 characters to write a short comment on what you are doing/feeling/seeing etc at that moment in time, when you click Update your 'followers' get updated on your status. Although I'm sure Twitter was originally designed with the purpose in mind of keeping friends, contacts etc in touch more and more celebrities are getting bitten by the bug and I think you now get a whole group of people 'Tweeting' purely to follow Philip Schofield (@schofe) day to day goings on or to see what Boris Johnson (@MayorOfLondon) is up to today.

The site itself is well designed and laid out - your status update box is at the top so you can easily send an update and underneath that are the updates from the people you are following. You can customise your background image but that is it, unlike Facebook, Myspace etc you don't have to waste time clicking through and accepting or rejecting the various Application/Game/Group invites etc you get each day - Twitter is purely about the updates and I love it.

A fairly recent development in the Twit world is that several companies are running competitions and advertising purely through the site, for example a web hosting site recently gave away a new iPhone every day for a month and to enter the competition all you had to do was mention that site in your tweet. I think this is great advertising because it takes the entrant just a few seconds to type a hash and the company name plus the company is getting heard of by thousands of new people.

There is a downside: due to the recent surge in popularity the Twitter servers can't always cope with the workload and you may find yourself struggling to log in or send updates.

I would have absolutely no hesitation in recommending Twitter to people, in fact I have convinced a number of people to sign up already. Although it may sound like a weird concept initially you will be surprised by how quickly you get drawn into the world of Tweets, Trends, Followers and those all important 140 characters.

A definite 5 star idea.

My username on Twitter is the same as on Dooyoo (@Phillipsdj) feel free to follow me

Summary: Great site which possibly needs to update it's servers