How and Why I Use Twitter

Over the past year or so, Twitter has become an integral part of my life.  Of course, when I first started using it, I was just like any other new person to Twitter.  I had less than ten followers, and I simply used it to tell my friends what I was doing.  At that point, it really was no different than a Facebook Status Update.  To be honest, I didn’t even see the point to using Twitter.  I kept asking myself, “Why do I need to tell these people what I’m doing?” and “Why do these people care what I’m doing?”  Well, since then, my thoughts on Twitter have greatly changed, and as I said, it’s now become an integral part of my life.

Twitter to me now is a social network of not only just friendly people to communicate with, but also useful, professional contacts.  It’s a lot of fun telling people what I’m doing and hearing their thoughts and input into my life.  Being a tech person, many of my tweets are me complaining about some piece of technology not working, or me expressing my views/opinions on something technology related.  It’s great hearing back from people with similar frustrations and thoughts.

As far as the professional contacts go, Twitter could not be more resourceful.  When we first got Verizon FiOS installed in our home, we had a lot of issues.  The speeds were nowhere near what they should have been.  After only a few hours of me tweeting out about my issues, @CZ on Twitter saw my tweets, and immediately was there to help.  He didn’t help me directly, but he escalated my issue so high up that we were getting dispatches made to our house for after-hours service calls.  It was ridiculous.  Within a few weeks and a few calls to a network engineer for Verizon, our issues were sorted out.  We also got a ridiculous amount credit applied to our account.  We didn’t pay for FiOS for months after we got it.  The issues would have never been sorted out in such an efficient manner had I tried explaining to a level 1 technician that yes, I’ve rebooted my router, etc.

More recently, a wonderful girl named Gina from PNC started following me on Twitter.  She’s funny and her tweets about PNC were very helpful and informative to me.  She took my feedback about VirtualWallet and relayed it to the developers who were only a short distance away from her in the building.  It turns out, Gina also knows someone from WPXI and she was able to get us a tour of their brand new studio.  This is something I had wanted to do for years, even before they got the new studio.  I was never able to get them to grant my request, however.

The most recent example of how Twitter helped me was with the application process for an American Express card.  Now that I’m 18, I want to start building some credit.  Well, of course, all major credit card companies, including American Express, denied my request for a card because I have no credit to be scored.  Well, isn’t that paradoxical?  The same reason I want a card is also the reason I’m being rejected for one.  Regardless, a super nice lady named Beth from @AskAmex, American Express’ corporate Twitter account, sent me a direct message and told me to call her.  Sure enough, we worked something out, and I’ll be getting an American Express card with my name on it in the mail this week coming up.  (It’s important to note that for now it’ll be backed by an existing card member’s account, but the general American Express number told me this wasn’t possible to do.)

Just a few final examples: I started communicating with @WebNoter from WebNotes and I now make Screencasts for their company, and, if all goes well, hopefully I’ll be helping @Zeo with something this summer coming up.

So, as you can see, Twitter really does have a lot of uses once you get your feet wet with it.  Some of my favorite people to follow on Twitter are @mattpippen, @Digeratii, @chrislovett, @iGerard, @kcclyburn, @captainjy, @Winnopeg, @hdberk, @dlberk, @maxkon, @technoheads, @marino_j, @UsefulTheory, @christophertran, @dysen, and @FantoMelt.  Follow them, and use Twitter to its fullest potential!

UPDATE: 9/19/09
Because of Twitter and @surpass, I have gotten three months of hosting for free by simply participating in, and winning, two Twitter promotions Surpass has had in the past few weeks.  In less than a month, I’ve scored three months of free hosting.  Thanks, Twitter!