By Tina Gasperson
If you spend any time at all on the Internet, you’ve probably been exposed to the term “social networking.” You may be familiar with sites like Myspace andFacebook are common examples of social networking Web sites, where users are connected to each other via friend lists. When you sign up for an account on one of these sites, you can find your friends, family, and acquaintances, put them on your friend list, and get notified whenever one of them updates their information or posts new photos.
Twitter is another example of a social network, but with a few differences that make it a little less intuitive for new users. The most important feature of Twitter is the status update, sometimes called a “tweet”. Users send frequent tweets of 140 characters or less that let their network of followers know what they’re doing right now. Veteran Twitter users swear by the service, saying it keeps them connected to other people in their network. Twitter provides business networking opportunities along with purely social “gab,” say fans of the service, that make it an invaluable part of their online life. (more…)