First off, let me announce that January will be New Orleans Month at SoloFriendly.com, as I’m headed to New Orleans in a couple of days and will have a lot to report on when I return, I’m sure.
As you may have noticed, I have installed a Twitter widget in the right column of this site so my Twitter updates are automatically added to this blog. During my upcoming trip to New Orleans, I plan to use Twitter to post updates to my site about what I’m seeing, doing, and experiencing in the Big Easy so you can follow along if you’re interested. (I’ll do this by texting the updates via my cellphone. If I remember to do it. Heh.) This seemed easier to me than lugging my laptop with me. It remains to be seen whether or not I was right. Stay tuned.
Why am I jumping on the Twitter bandwagon? For those of you who don’t know what Twitter is, welcome back to civilization–we missed you! (Just kidding.) Twitter is yet another in a long line of technology-based social networking tools. I’ve known about it for awhile, but wasn’t really motivated to give it a try until now. I already have a Facebook account to keep up with my (real life) friends and family, so I didn’t really think I needed Twitter, too. And there are only so many hours one can spend online, you know? Then I happened to read an article mentioning that many other travel bloggers had really embraced Twitter. So then I had to see what all the fuss was about.
I created an account and have been testing it out for the past couple of weeks. It closely resembles the status updates on Facebook. Where Twitter has a lot of potential is a) keeping people updated while you’re on the road, and b) getting up-to-the-minute updates that you want to read all in one place. For instance, there has been a lot of great information coming out this week from VisitChicago (which would be really useful if I were visiting Chicago any time soon for longer than a one hour layover–please God let it only be a one hour layover) as well as from some Twitterers who attended the grand opening of Steve Wynn’s new Las Vegas hotel, Encore. I can read them all on my Twitter home page much the way you would read newsfeeds.
The biggest flaw I’ve found so far on Twitter is that it’s difficult to find people to follow by category. I don’t want to duplicate my Facebook network; I want to use Twitter to create a network specifically of people in the travel industry. But because Twitter has no search function that operates by category, I have had to hunt high and low to find Twitterers in the travel industry, which is incredibly time-consuming. That’s something they need to work on.
If you want to “follow” me (and SoloFriendly.com) on Twitter, you can find me at http://www.twitter.com/SoloFriendly. Otherwise, you can read my Twitter posts here on SoloFriendly.com.
on Dec 27th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
One good way to find twitter-buddies is to use Twitter Groups:
http://twittgroups.com/
It’s still somewhat time consuming, however.
on Dec 27th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
One good way to find twitter-buddies is to use Twitter Groups:
http://twittgroups.com/
It’s still somewhat time consuming, however.
on Dec 31st, 2008 at 1:37 am
Thanks, Brad. I’ll check it out.
on Dec 30th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Thanks, Brad. I’ll check it out.
on Aug 8th, 2011 at 11:11 pm
http://twittgroups.com/ is very useful in looking for friends on the same boat as yours.
on Nov 7th, 2011 at 10:57 am
Not really got into tweeting yet. I follow celebs and sports people I’m interested in but never really tweeted myself. Guess I’m a bit self concious!
on Nov 7th, 2011 at 5:14 pm
It’s not for everyone, Rich, but I’ve met a lot of cool people on Twitter, so it’s worth it for me.