Reading time: 42 – 70 minutes

I thought Twitter sounded pretty crazy when I first heard about it a couple of years ago.  140 characters to tell other random people what I’m doing?  Turns out I love Twitter and it’s pretty cool once you get it figured out.

The analogy I like best is the water cooler comparison — Twitter is like the office water cooler where people pop in to chat during little breaks in their day.

I enjoy Twitter because of it’s simplicity.  Short messages.  Nothing complicated.  It’s simple and easy.  You can tweet from the website at www.twitter.com or you can use a program like HootSuite or Tweetie (iPod Touch/iPhone app).  You can also tweet from various smart phones.

So, what’s it good for?  Twitter’s a free way you can:

• Find and connect with people
• Ask questions
• Give answers
• Drive traffic to your website
• Get support

I’ve found it helpful in everything from getting gum out of my daughter’s hair (for the record, peanut butter works very well), to connecting with people for business purposes.

Over the next week or so I’ll be sharing tips on how to customize your Twitter profile, what to tweet about, how to find followers and more.

And, just for fun, here’s a mosaic of some of my Twitter followers (link at the bottom will let you make your own if you want to).

Get your twitter mosaic here.