Tweet? Twitter? Say What?

Got something to say? Why not say it to the world? As long as you are willing and able to say it in 140 characters or less, Twitter may be for you. What is this Twitter of which you speak, you may ask? First a little background.

Twitter is an online service that allows people to post short messages in what some people call a “micro-blog”. What is a blog? You are reading one. Blog is short for weblog and is an updating series of articles in which you can read about whatever subject the writer wants to write about. There are blogs about cats and sewing and sports and even technology—like this one.

Twitter came along and took the blog concept one step further by limiting the posts to 140 characters (letters, spaces or numbers). Why only 140 characters, you ask? (Boy, you sure have a lot of questions). 140 characters is just the right amount to fit in a cell phone text message. The idea behind Twitter is not to write a lengthy article like this one, which really has gotten much too long already, but rather to post a quick glimpse into the mind of the tweeter whenever or wherever they may be. Posts on Twitter are called tweets and that is just too cute to bear, isn’t it?

You can follow people on Twitter to read all of the things they tweet or you can search for tweets about certain subjects. The best part of it is that Twitter, like many great resources online, is free. Many celebritiestTweet regularly on Twitter and goodness knows we always want to know exactly what is going on in THEIR minds. If you were so inclined, you could even follow me on Twitter, but even better would be to follow Arlington Patch.

So cruise on over to www.twitter.com and check out the never-ending stream of the world’s consciousness. Lady Gaga tweets—and so should you.