Twitter twitterings

Today, Twitter went down and revived itself before I even knew about it. I saw a news story online and then saw a flood of stories about how Armageddon had almost arrived. I was expecting the Four Horsemen of the Internet to have descended upon the fragile intertwinings of the new darling of social media. People were literally all atwitter about the lack of Twitter. I like Twitter, I use it, although in a more passive/lurker mode than as an active and frequent twitter tweeter. I follow friends and podcasts, folks who have similar interests that I may know from forums I read (and lurk in). I have posted 220 tweets (as of today) and I joined Twitter over a year ago. I have also sent about 60 direct messages (most to the same person – it seems quicker than email or texting for some reason). I’m not a super-user by any stretch of the imagination, but had I known that Twitter had big issues today, I probably would have checked every few minutes to see if it was back up and working. I like seeing what my tweeps are doing, what interesting pictures they're sharing, or what links they have posted. I do feel connected to these folks and I would not have enjoyed being out of touch.

How I would have checked Twitter's status brings me to this point: I can’t have Twitter open on my work laptop (nor should I, really), but I can check the various apps on my iPhone that allow users to tweet, post picture via Twitpic (or yfrog, flic.kr, etc.), send direct messages, follow, unfollow, well, you get the idea. The apps allow a person to follow Twitter, even when they can’t get to a computer. There are many apps around that do this. I have 4 right now, Twitterific, TweetDeck, TwitterFon, and iTwitter. What I’d like to try to do over the next few posts (which I hope are more frequent than my more recent posts), is review, in an unscientific way, these apps, how they work for me, which one I use most and why.

Twitter, Facebook, Blogger oh my!

So I'm still searching for a new job. Had some good news about the former employer possibility, but won't start until next week at the earliest. Had a contractor call about a possible position, so hopefully I'll get an interview. I spent yesterday getting back into the swing of searching, did some work around the house, etc. I must say, though that even in the five weeks that I was on the contract position, I have come to see the possibilities of Twitter, Facebook, and blogging. Not as money-making propositions-not even sure how that would work with Twitter-but as easy ways to keep in touch with people. I follow about 20 people on Twitter and I doubt I'll ever meet half of them, but I still like to see what they are doing. There are other sites that are more useful for finding leads and contacts for work such as LinkedIn and even those sites keep me connected to many people. But here's the thing-you can spend all day on these sites if you're not careful and take a break. Someone like me who sees a tweet, a post, a link, or a blog that has interesting information can send me on a search through Google or through Wikipedia and eat away the hours.