The internet is for porn! (Twitter.com)

Member Name: sirg0508

Product:	Twitter.com
Date:	17/08/09 (167 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Keep in contact with friends

Disadvantages: Lots of spam, porn, slow in dealing with abuse

Twitter is a very simple idea. Taking the status update from the likes of Facebook and using it as a way to let those following you find out what you are up to within 140 characters. The very easy sign up process only requires your name, username, password and email address then once confirmed, you have a box with that easy question: What are you doing?

I joined Twitter in June 2008 (yes before Stephen Fry) primarily to follow the updates of friends and a few YouTube celebrities that had already found the site. Since then it has grown but not always in a favourable way.

Example of a tweet: "It's 5am and I'm writing a review. The sun is starting to rise but it looks like it will be a great day :)" It might sound boring if you read those daily but depending on who you follow you may find twitters that make you laugh, cry, give you an insight into someone's life or can be very informative.

The first step really is to find people to follow. Because I already had a good list of friends to follow I didn't realise how people could think it wasn't worth it until I recently deleted my account and started again. Finding a lot of friends have posted updates is a more interesting to go through than just one update so encourages you to visit regularly. If you know someone who has a Twitter account just visit their page and click the Follow button... simple!

The site is very simply designed with the ability to customise with a background picture, profile picture and information such as location and a link to your website. I love the simplicity of the site because it takes out all the complications of figuring out what to do. One thing I do like is the ability to make your twitter page private. By protecting it you have the ability to prevent people from adding you until you accept them and no one can see what you're tweeting. This stops the huge number of spam accounts being added and gives you control over who you do want to see what you tweet. The reliability of the site however isn't as good but has improved. The 'Fail Whale' is something that I am very familiar with indicating too many people are trying to use the site. There is also a picture for technical problems which doesn't show up as much but still means having to wait for the site returning.

I have used Twitter Support several times in my time on the site. The majority of these complaints have been abuse. The help page is a pain to navigate and unfortunately they do take their time in dealing with problems. A couple of times I reported people it took them 3 months to even read the request although to give them credit I did report someone recently and it only took 2 weeks.

Twitter gives you the ability to text updates while you are away from the computer. I am with O2 and can text free if I have free texts and with most networks it's just the standard rate of a text but some think it's an international number and charge up to 35p. There have been a few problems with delays in the texts updating on the website but it has been pretty reliable for me. Twitter will also send you the updates and Direct Messages by text of the people you follow. This used to work on all networks but until the networks provide discounts only Vodaphone provide this. You can choose who you want to receive updates for and it is easy to switch on and off while you are out.

The number of applications available to do with twitter is huge. There are downloads for your desktop, things for your phone.... My personal favourites include Tweetdeck which is a desktop application which makes a noise when new tweets are made (similar to this is Twhirl). I also like using Twitpic which allows me to upload photos and will tweet, if requested, a link to the picture for my followers to see and reply. Websites with twitter information I like include Wefollow.com which helps you find those in your interest areas easily and there are anonymous twittering sites such as GivesMeHope.com or Secrettweet.com.

The site has grown incredibly as the celebrities have jumped on the bandwagon and let their fans know about the site. I don't think I'll forget the day Stephen Fry got trapped in a lift, Aston Kutcher reached 1 million followers, the news of the Hudson plane crash or the news of Michael Jackson's passing. News really does travel fast these days so even if you don't have friends with an account you are likely to find someone of interest to follow: TV, celebs, bloggers, news, musicians, writers, actors, comedians, politics, authors, sports...

This brings up one of the bad points of Twitters growth. While it was a way for friends to keep in contact the business world has adopted it as an additional way to let people know about their products and services. How do they do this? They follow anyone and everyone; have keywords automatically tweet messages to you and the majority of the time its spam. They either won't have any updates but still have a link to their website on their twitter page or their tweets will be full of links to things. Luckily you don't see any of those unless you follow them. I can't say big companies have ever annoyed me but you wouldn't believe the number of 'marketers' out there selling their products/services and apparently there's a lot of porn to be found on the net (who knew!). If you ever see a tweet promising you hundreds of new followers avoid avoid AVOID. These things will tweet from your account over and over with a link and occasionally link to viruses. They don't gain you any followers and just annoy the ones you do have! If you do have unprotected updates (i.e. everyone can see them), I'd advise not to mention money in your tweet... the number of followers you gain with links to earning money is ridiculous.

There are a few companies I follow though and some of them have realised people like to win things so run competitions on Twitter, provide discounts for their followers and it's an easy way for them to talk to customers - some actually provide customer service by Twitter if they find someone isn't happy with their products.

I'm still not sure I like Trending Topics which can be found down the right hand side of everyone's Twitter page. These are the most common words and phrases being used throughout the day and are regularly updated. Examples of past topics include Goodnight and Michael Jackson. For me the TTs have been informative but that does end when you find people decide they want to get X phrase on the list and will spam over and over to get it up there. I'm glad Twitter do have a strict spam policy because they have removed some topics.

Overall I love the site. I have a great set of people I follow that do make me laugh and cry and out of the celebrities I follow, I love hearing about their lives. I have no hesitation in using the Block button but I do hope they crack down on dealing with abuse and the enormous amount of spam.

Summary: A great social website whether on a computer or on the move