Now, even though someone else made my twitter account, I do end up using it… because web developers use it, and they tweet things like references to articles on development, accessibility, and new versions of software being released.
I follow Al-Jazeera News on Twitter because they tweet their headlines with always a link to the article, so I can keep up on the news either by reading the headlines or, if an article interests me, I can open the full article in a tab and read it later. Why Al-Jazeera? No celebrity BS or “overweight family lives off biscuits and cream!” Just news.
I follow Arriva.nl, which is the company running the local train run near me, and also the local busses. They tweet about problems, delays, and new times/schedules, which is great because I’m not a regular-enough rider to already know that stuff… so if a bus line I’m planning to take is down, I know it before I stand at the stop for an hour or two.
I follow people like Nicholas Zakas, PPK, Steve Faulkner and Bruce Lawson, because in between tweets about getting their hair done and breakfast, they tweet developments in Javascript, mobile device research, accessibility and HTML5, again often with links to articles and ideas.
My family is full of nerds so twitter is how they keep tabs on who’s going where, in place of email. So it’s useful there as well, for simple family news.
It is full of “this morning I ate and then I pooped”, but it depends who you follow.
And people are pretty creative in being funny in 140 characters. Ethan Marcotte recently twotted (yeah I like the mangle the goofy-sounding word) this gem:
“Now be careful, they just came out of the oven—” “WOMAN THIS IS NO TIME FOR CAUTION FRESHLY BAKED COOKIES ARE AVAILABOH GOD MY MOUTH”
Yeah, it doesn’t mean anything, but it’s better than
“Dontcha just LOVE what Justin Beeber has done with his hair?? OMIGOD #beeber”
Though I guess those are unavoidable; people post both personal and professional tweets in the same account.
And I’m not saying I twit anything worthwhile, but it can be useful for just listening.