After I read my pal Max Limpag’s blog, I decided to finally try Twitter . It is a big hit among techies, and it is a great and free.  Think about everybody of you are in Yahoogroups, and your messages can be sent, and seen by everybody that asks to see it.  However, instead of the messages coming and going to email, it can come from the mobile phone text or instant messaging.  That is basically what twitter does.  It is just like a blogging through a cell phone or mini device, but each post is only upto 140 characters ( just like a text message), but there is all to it.

What you do is get a free account.  And then you get your pal a freeaccount.  Then you can each follow each others update through the web, orthrough phone.  So if I text to my account, and you are following it, whatTwitter will do is send you a free text of what I wrote to my account. You can also see the update in the web through my  Twitter URL, or you canactually see it through your own!

So let us say that I have a twitter account, and that all my friends ( let us say 60 of them) subscribe to it.  If I go to a mall, and I see that there is a new restaurant opening, I can just text to my twitter account, and all my friends will instantly get updated about that!  This is a great way to get in touch.

A  twitter account gets you 250 free SMS per week.  Of course, ifyou do international text, it is expensive, but in many countries, you get the texts from them for free.  So, what you can do is that you sign up your phone to receive thetext, but you can answer or post to your twitter either through the web, orthrough instant messaging. And suddenly you have an e-groups through text and allows you to tell whoever is following what you are doing or thinking! 

For instance, a few dozen techies decided to use it in the South by Southwest Interactive Conference.  So everybody was texting to their account what was happening to the conference, knowing what their friends were upto, and who were the good speakers, and what agenda was coming next.  Everybody even got updates on their phones which booth was giving freebies, or which venue had better food, or which hotel had bad service.

My two kids will be going to a 6 week educational trip soon.  Maybe the best way for us to know what is happening ( together with the other moms of the other 30 kids) is to ask them to twitter to us.

You would be surprised, but it may be because of Twitter that Americans willfinally get into the habit of texting.