One of the reasons for Twitter’s popularity is its simplicity. You follow people, and people follow you, and that’s it.

But, why should anyone follow anyone? Why should I follow you? I will leave it to you to answer that question, but I will tell you why you should follow me.

• I like to engage with my fellow Tweeters. If you are following me on Twitter, it is quite likely that we will be involved in a meaningful conversation at some point of time or another.
• If you follow me, and you are not a bot, it is quite likely that I will follow you back. I am sure you, like me, would like an increase in the number of your followers too
• I like to share interesting quotes, pictures, and content that I find on the Internet. So, if you are following me, you are sure to come across a tweet that will interest you.
• I promote quality. If you have written/drawn/created something interesting, and tweeted about it, it is highly probable that I will ReTweet it. This way I can help you spread the word about your stuff, and at the same time introduce you to stuff by other people.
• I don’t tweet about my own stuff all the time. Though, I will do that on occasions.
• Lastly, and, I think, most importantly I like to have a good time while I am using the Internet. So, if you follow me, you and I can have a fun time together.

So, now, tell me, why should I follow you?

(This post is not meant to blow my own horn, but is meant to be illustrative of what I think makes a good Twitizen. But, if I have manged to convince you to follow me, you can follow me at @neobluepanther)

Recently I was going through Brian Clark’s blog, and I came across an article with an interesting title: How Twitter Makes You A Better Writer. After going through the article, I was far from convinced  that Twitter can help you in improving your writing. In fact, not too many days ago, I was thinking that too much tweeting can actually hurt your writing.

Twitter gives you only 140 characters to say what is on your mind. With a 140 character limit, there is not a lot that you can say, even if you are trying to be concise. If you want to convey anything meaningful, you need more space than that. If you don’t have more space, what do you do: You try to find a shorter way to say what you have to say.

There are two ways in which you can do that.

The first way: Edit your tweet, change a few words, and try to be as concise as you can, but ensure all the while that you do not break the rules of proper English usage. If this attempt results in less than 140 characters, you are good to go, if not then you still have an unsolved problem on your hands.

The second way: Use chat lingo like u, gr8, dat, etc. Remove any extra words that may be grammatically correct, but are not needed to get the meaning across. In short, just type your message in any way that get the meaning gets across.  With SMS already being a part of our lives, this method comes naturally to most of us.

If you were tweeting to impress someone (maybe an editor, or a boss), you might want to take the first route. But, more often than not, Twitter is used as a platform for informal interaction, and playing by the rules is not that important. Therefore, most people choose the second way of making sure that their message does not cross 140 word limits.

As an example in the image above, I have taken one of my own tweets from not too long ago. At the time of tweeting that, I had no idea that I would be writing this post.

What do you think: Does Twitter make you a better writer or a worse one. Or, does it have no effect on your writing?

In fact, I am sure, many people these days get their first experience of the Internet through a social networking site.

The Nielsen report further states that, “Facebook – the world’s most popular social network – is visited monthly by three in every 10 people online across the nine markets in which Nielsen tracks social networking use.”

Another social networking site that is making the news these days is twitter. Though, it seems, twitter has not made it into the report this year, but if it continues to grow at the rate it is growing, no report will be able to ignore it. So, one can’t help but wonder, what keeps twitter growing, even in the face of competitors like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut etc. Here are some reasons that I feel are contributing to the success of twitter, and set it apart from any other social networking site:

1) Simplicity: I don’t know what Albert Einstein had in mind when he said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler,” but this quote describes twitter aptly. Using the site is very simple, and it helps in achieving the basic purpose. You can share what is happening in your life, and others can tell you what is going on with theirs. That’s it. No frills, all value!

2) Comparative Newness: There seems to be a soft corner in the Internet user’s heart for start-ups. The Internet user wants to support any thing that is trying to establish itself against something that is already established. Maybe it makes him feel that, someday, he can start something like this of his own, and succeed.

3) Increased anonymity: Twitter does not ask for a lot of information and does not have a lot of information displayed on the profile page. You can choose to reveal as much of you as you want, which, I feel, makes a lot of people feel safe and comfortable. They can tell others about things that they want to, and keep other things to themselves.

4) What are you doing?: This is the simple question that twitter asks. And, this is the question everyone loves to answer. Why? The one reason I can think of is that when other people know about what we are doing, it makes us feel like a celebrity, and who does not want to feel that way?

5) Celebrities on twitter: Another reason for twitter’s recent popularity is the joining-in of many celebrities. A list of celebrities on twitter can be found here. If all these celebrities can find time to twitter, why can’t we? Plus, we can have the additional benefit of knowing what is happening in their lives before anyone else.

6) Twitter as news-breaker: Increasingly, twitter has started to act as source of breaking news. From my experience, I can safely say that I read about a few news items on twitter before I read them in the papers. I am sure you have had experiences like that too.

7) Link sharing: We all know how we bloggers, and other website developers, are forever interested in sharing our links with others, in the hope of getting a few more hits. Twitter allows us to do that, and, in fact, sends some good traffic to our site.

8 ) Rising Sun: There is a saying in Hindi that says, ” Everyone salutes the rising Sun.” Twitter, at the moment seems to be the rising Sun, and everyone seems to be saluting it.

Why do you like Twitter?