Friday, February 15, 2008 -- 4:25 p.m. -- on my couch

**UPDATE: I love all the callers signing up on my Twitter feed. Let's keep it up. Thousands of you visit the blog every day ... I'd love to have thousands of you with me on Twitter.**

I've been playing around a little with Twitter and now I finally understand how powerful it can be.

In case you didn't see the announcement, iPhone Therefore I Blog is now on Twitter at iPTIB.

For many people, Twitter is meant as a way to let people know every single thing you are doing at any given moment. And that's fine because in its own right, that's pretty darn cool.

But I have a different take that I think will benefit the iPhone community much more.

I am going to use Twitter solely as a breaking news vehicle and as a way to send out important blog announcements.

So for example, if I'm riding the bus to work and I'm 15 minutes away and the 3G iPhone is released, anyone will is following iPTIB on Twitter will get an instant alert letting them know with any short details and instructions on when to check the blog, etc.

Or if I am sent out of town because Steve Jobs wants to have lunch with me, I'll let you know that I may be blogging a little less while flying to California and that I may have an exclusive Q&A with the genius in long sleeves.

What won't you see on your iPTIB Twitter feed? Well, I won't tell you when I wear my black belt to work as opposed to my brown one. And I won't tell you how long it took me to catch an elevator to the lobby in my apartment building. And I won't tell you when I have a beyond excellent grilled cheese sandwich.

I take that back. I might let you know about the grilled cheese sandwich. Especially if it's the kind with bacon and tomato. Yum.

So ... that said ... if you use Twitter, add iPTIB to be assured of the most timely breaking news updates and rest assured you don't have to worry about using up all your allotted text messages. I just can't tell you everything I want to tell you in 140 characters.

But if something happens that's not quite breaking but I think is of great interest, I'll share that as well.

And if you know anyone who has an interest in the iPhone, please do tell them about the blog, but also tell them to sign up for iPTIB feeds.

Remember that when I tell you that this should be your No. 1 source for iPhone breaking news, analysis and witty banter that I mean it.

Thanks for calling. And for following me.

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I love Twitter,too. For me and my "network" it's more about advancing our ideas. We are a group of progressive educators who try to get teachers and decision makers to think out of the box. Our circle uses Twitter, for example, to share examples of great teaching practices. We blog about these contantly and share great ideas. It is a non-linear effort to push people out of their comfort zone to teach students IN their comfort zone!

http://www.macmomma.blogspot.com/

http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/kolbert/

SCOTT'S REPLY: That's excellent and what's so cool is that we all use it just a little bit differently.

I'm always so excited to see bloggers on Twitter! I've started following you now, too. (I'm @MarinaMartin.)

You should try using Twitter tracking to find other people who are tweeting about their iPhones so you can interact with some of them -- answer questions, suggest a particular app -- and gain additional followers/readers for your blog. Twitter works best when you become part of the community and don't just send announcements to it.

To use Twitter tracking, just tweet:
track iphone
(or replace iphone with any word)
and you'll get all tweets containing that word sent to your IM or SMS, depending on what notifications you have set.

It's also polite to follow back your readers, even if you're not interacting very much. You can auto-follow using a site like SocialToo.com, or use a program like Twitter Karma (http://www.dossy.org/twitter/karma) to selectively but quickly follow in bulk.

BTW, your photo is making me very hungry!

SCOTT'S REPLY: Marina, this is really good information and I really appreciate it. I will certainly follow all that follow me -- that certainly seems like the right thing to do. And I agree. I would love to help people, independent of building readership. I do that on the Apple forums and you are right ... I should do it whenever possible. So I will.

Thank you for the great and informative comment.

I advise you that you should read a whole book in on this :)

SCOTT'S REPLY: Really? Which one do you recommend?

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