Everywhere you seem to turn lately people are talking about Twitter. The social networking site has been getting its fair share of media coverage these days as major news networks, celebrities and the mainstream web user has started to embrace the Twitterverse. I find quite often I’m asked questions about Twitter as many of my friends start dipping their toes into the experience. So I decided to do a little FAQ on the topic in hopes of enlightening people on what Twitter is all about.

What is Twitter?
This is the question I get asked most often about Twitter and also tends to be the most loaded question to answer. At its very simplest Twitter is similar to a Facebook status. 140 characters to to convey the answer to the question “What are you doing?”. Doesn’t sound very enlightening does it? It took me quite awhile to get my head around the concept before I even joined Twitter. I just didn’t get it, until I watched this video last year.

As a blogger the idea that Twitter fills in the gaps between blog posts appealed to me and got me interested. Sometimes you just have small thoughts or ideas that you’d like to broadcast to the world, yet they really aren’t full formed topics that you could make into a blog post. Hence where Twitter fits in. Twitter almost serves as broadcast instant messaging, where instead of chatting to one friend, you’re broadcasting to a whole array of followers.

Is Twitter just another social network like Facebook?
This is a question could go either way, but I’m going to go with no. What makes Facebook so popular is that it is a centralized website that allows you to keep up with friends past and present. It works as essentially a walled garden where fraternizing with people you don’t know is generally discouraged. Twitter is a different beast altogether. While there is a central website to congregate with others on, the power of Twitter lies in the various applications that support the Twitter API. Being able to send tweets from your iPhone or BlackBerry liberates you to share with the world 140 characters at a time, wherever you are. Sure you can use Facebook on the go, but you really aren’t able to actually get the full experience like you can on a regular PC. Twitter is much more bite-sized, so to speak, making the content a lot more consumable on the go.

How do I find interesting people to follow on Twitter?
There are a couple of ways to go about finding people on Twitter. When people ask me this question I typically point them to search.twitter.com and search for a topic of interest. There you’ll find lots of people talking about your topic of interest. Click to view a users profile and see if their tweets are of any interest to you. If so, just click the follow button and you’ll be able to keep up with their updates. There are also new directories services like wefollow.com that allows users to list themselves under topics of interest of their choosing, so you can find loads of people who share your same interests. As a Twitter user I tend to like finding people that are local to me, so directories like LoadedWeb.com help find users in my neighbourhood. Once you have some people to follow, start seeing who those people are conversing with and see about adding them. Odds are the people they follow might be of interest to you too.

How do I get people to follow me?
The best answer to this is to start Twittering. As I mentioned above, how you find people is by searching for users with similar interests. Once you join and start adding to the conversation, people will find you the same way, by searching. Talk about stuff that interests you and by extension people will find you. If you have something interesting to say or offer to the people you follow, they will probably follow you back. It’s all about being part of the conversation.

What are all these Twitter apps?
The world of Twitter really only starts with the website and it made whole by using other applications. Twitter by its very nature is very dynamic in that it is a constant free flow of information, whereas websites by their very nature are typically static. That’s why getting a standalone application to keep on top of Twitter is really handy. Be it on your PC or on your mobile device, you can keep tabs of what the people you follow are doing much easier then you can through the website. Here’s a pretty intensive list of twitter apps for Mac, PC, iPhone, BlackBerry and anything else out there.

That should get you started at very least in the world of Twitter. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. For a community based around 140 character messages there is a fair amount of depth to the whole experience. I find I learn new things everyday from those I follow, find great links, new restaurants and events going on in my area. I’ve met new friends and been able to share my experiences with others around the world 140 characters at a time. For those on the fence, all I can say is give it a month. You can’t really get a good feel for the service by using it for a day or two. If you’d like to follow my tweets, I can be found @modsuperstar