Blogging For Dummies, 5th Edition

Chapter 17

Joining the Twitterverse

In This Chapter

Taking the measure of Twitter

Using Twitter

Customizing your account

Bringing Twitter and your blog together

Over the last few years, Twitter has progressed from a confusing niche platform to a mainstream tool. Even so, that doesn't mean that you don't have questions, so this chapter gets down to brass tacks.

Twitter (www.twitter.com) is a free social network used for micro blogging, which is essentially blogging, but in very short form. How short? Well, on Twitter, your posts are limited to 140 characters — barely enough for a couple of sentences. If you use Facebook, you may be surprised to know that you're already familiar with micro blogging.

Although you can post only up to 140 characters of text at a time on Twitter, you can use it to share photographs and links, even videos. Many businesses have jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon and use the tool to tell their customers about sales, specials, and other news.

 If this chapter ...