I’ve spent the last couple of days mucking around with Twitter. I can’t gauge how many people are using in New Zealand yet but I’m keen to get everyone on it.

In a nutshell:
Twitter lets you broadcast “what I am doing” by updating your online profile. Those “following” your profile can choose how to receive your updates i.e. email, text messaging, instant message, RSS.

To understand this, your friends can be “following” your profile and if you’re going out for drinks you can update your profile with that information, your friends get updated and those keen can join you for drinks.

The cool thing about this is that it is free. You also don’t need to update your profile for everyone, it is possible to send twitter messages or “twits” for short directly to individual users following you. If you understand that correctly, it is possible to send text messages for free…as long as they are on Twitter.

If you use an Instant Messaging client, i.e. Google Talk, it’s possible to update your Twitter profile directly from your client which makes that process easy and accessible.

The most interesting functionality I’ve discovered so far is if someones profile I am following is updated, I get that twit on my Google Talk. But if I sign out of Google Talk I get the twit on my cellphone. Which makes sense & is functionality I would want if it weren’t available.

Sign up to Twitter. If you live in Auckland, follow my profile!