Life Casting and Micro Blogging

This is the definition of twitter when you log onto the Twitter website:

People write short updates, often called “tweets” of 140 characters or fewer.  These messages are posted to your profile or your blog, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search.

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

How it Works?
So what does Twitter do? When you sign up with Twitter, you can use the service to post and receive messages to a network of contacts. Instead of sending a dozen e-mails or text messages, you send one message to your Twitter account, and the service distributes it to all your friends. In case you’re saying to yourself, ‘oh! It’s a simple status change that let’s people know what we’re doing at that time – just like Facebook’, well, you wouldn’t be that far off. Twitter is something known as ‘micro-blogging’ because it has a character limitation members use Twitter to organize impromptu gatherings, carry on a group conversation or just send a quick update to let people know what’s going on.

Strategies:
Effectiveness and usefulness of twitter is explored in many ways and it is found quite convenient. Here are few examples:

Twitter is very effective to promote and spread  breaking news. News sources such as the BBC,  CNN, Al-Jazeera and other outlets are also using Twitter to disseminate breaking news or provide  information feeds for sporting events. During the recent Mumbai attacks or unrest in cities of Pakistan, Tweets have provided people with timely  updates on how, where, when and why things were  happening.

It is a very cost effective tool of communication and appreciated by the tech savvy. It could also be utilized by Governments, NGO’s, Hospitals, Rescue  Services, Law and Order maintaining Authorities     to spread useful information.

Twitter was in limelight when it comes to Social Activism and Citizen Journalism. It is playing an increasingly important role in awareness and   provoking the participation of people on many issues. More recently, the Gaza War is still being  debated and several cases were brought to light   against Human  Rights and War crimes.

Organizations can use twitter as a micro-blogging communication tool for both internal and external perspective. Its application can be considered in IT,   Economy, Human resource, management,  marketing, communication, human resource, sales,  logistics and product development.

Twitter in Pakistan:
Like many other social networking tools, Twitter is widely used amongst the tech-savvy community in Pakistan and gaining in popularity every passing day, in the urban cities. Twitter is not merely a communication – it is the concept of ‘life casting’ to your friends and family. It also enables you to engage yourself with forums, blogs, media channel and other sources to update you regarding hot issues, general awareness and knowledge areas. The Pakistani content is gradually attracted towards Twitter as many news channels and blogs are having their Twitter accounts.

Pakistani Tweeters have used this application in the World Cup 2007 to get ‘ball by ball’ updates and in Ramadan, when Twitter sent you a Tweet 15 minutes before Iftaar (Dusk, when the fast may be broken).

As researched from few sources, it is found that Twitter works on Mobilink, Telenor, Warid and Zong where you have to get connected by sending a message to +44 762 4801423. The fact that there is a UK number which enables Tweets to travel through the Web from the mobile phone, is the reason why Twitter through SMS hasn’t picked up as much in Pakistan. However, with the recent launch of iSMS (isms.pk), which is essentially a project that will enable you to Twitter via SMSing a local number, is something that will hopefully see a massive, accelerated growth in this trend… but more on that, later!•

Poll:
How do you use Twitter? Send us what your Twitter account is so we can FOLLOW you!