Twitter For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 16

Ten Cool Ways to Use Twitter

You can use Twitter for much more than keeping up with your friends and family. Whether you use it to stay on top of your industry, breaking news, or tidbits from your favorite shows and celebrities, Twitter has many cool and diverse uses. And yes, you can even find out, or tell the world, what’s for lunch. The possibilities are endless. In this chapter, we introduce you to ten cool ways you can use Twitter.

Socialize and Network

Across the wide universe of Twitter users, one of the most popular uses is simply chatting and keeping up with family and friends. As fun as it is to follow “famous” accounts, the most engaged people on Twitter largely use it to keep up with their various social and business circles.

Twitter is extremely powerful for networking because Twitter actually mimics how people build trust — gradually, through random interactions over time, and without anyone confronting them and asking for stuff.

Routine, random, not-that-important interactions weave the fabric of community that holds the world together, in real life and on social networks alike. Twitter’s environment of random interactions makes discovering new people with shared interests pretty easy, and helps you gradually learn what interests them.

On the go, it’s really easy to stay in touch with someone and follow up later by simply exchanging usernames with someone. Later on, you can find her again, recommend her to someone else, send her an @Mention, or just ...