Even more frustrating has been the fact that the major reason for them leaving is usually something along the lines of “it’s just like FB updates – rubbish”, “I’m really not interested in celebs”, or “I really don’t want to know what you ate for dinner last night.”  Generally, a misunderstanding of the potential the system has for use outside of the lifestyle/celebrity crowd, and the usefulness it brings to work, networking, & news (a fact not generally touted by users or Twitter themselves).

So, it’s with that in mind that I’ve taken it up to put together a Twitter guide for the professional newbie; how it can help with news, connecting within your industry, how helpful it can be for day to day working and how you can incorporate it into your professional life – without being bombarded with the latest celeb scandals and other irrelevant information.

I’ve split the guide up into parts to make to a little easier to take in.  In this first part, I’m just going to outline the various uses of Twitter (plus some examples) just to straighten out the myth that it’s not just a Facebook updater.

One common assumption that people struggle with is realising what Twitter really is – the most frequent description I hear from the  non-believers being that it’s  just a ‘Facebook Updater’ network; only being a slice of Facebooks functionality and not worth looking into. Wrong!

It really is different things to different people, and that’s one of the reasons it’s so good – it’s that flexible you can use it for all manner of functions.  It’s generally described professionally as a ‘microblogging service’.  I’ll go into how it can be used shortly, but personally, I view Twitter predominately as a combination of 3 main tools;

1. RSS Reader; to deliver articles & news straight to my feed.
2. Messaging & discussion program; to have conversations online with anyone who has a twitter account – whether they know me or not.
3. Blogging tool; a place to post my thoughts and findings to anyone who’s following me – and hopefully get feedback on those or start a discussion.

It’s a constantly updating feed, with information from everyone I’m following; whether that be finding out what someone had for breakfast (generally not my area of interest), knowing what’s getting discussed in Westminster today,  finding out the latest footy scores, or getting help with an Excel problem that’s got me stumped.  It’s such a useful program, this is one of the reasons once people get hooked on it, they come to rely on it as a tool for all these needs in one place.

OK, so how do these functions relate to practical uses, especially for a working professional? Here’s just a few examples…

• Breaking News – If you’re a news junkie, Twitter will probably be your new best friend.  Regardless of if it’s breaking world news, business news, funny news, or specific news about your industry of work, with a little investment you can get all the relevant information as it happens, straight to your account.  Twitter news outlets are notorious for getting news out there before things come onto the main commercial channels, so you’ll usually know about things before they go public – and by tailoring your followings, you can get just the useful news that matters to you.  You can easily cut out anything that start to become irrelevant.
• Tip, Tricks, Articles & Links – Any online information relevant to your industry and your place of work.  Be it the environment, politics, retail, stocks, healthcare, and on and on… There are some great providers our there – both individuals and organisations – that publish some really useful information.  Articles and publications from your industry, new developments across businesses, on the job tips, and information that can be hard to hunt down through search engines alone can all easily be sent straight to you Twitter feed if you’re following the right accounts.
• Networking & Help – Once you’re setup with an account you can send a tailored message to anyone else on Twitter; and if they follow your feed, you can send them a private message.  This functionality gives the program excellent social appeal.  You can speak to leaders in your industry that you would never have been able to reach previously.  You can get involved in discussions with them, speaking to a range of people across the world that work in your area – something that’s never been available before and you’ll find after a while it really start to change the way you communicate. Problems with a project? Struggling with some programming? Twitter can be a great resource for help too, rather than digging around on support forums, sometimes sending out a tweet to a few select people can yield wonders in return.  Meeting experts around the world that work in your area is a great experience, really opening up communication channels across industries.  And because it’s persistent, you can have conversations over several days if you’re ran off you’re feet.

More to come in part 2…

With the advancement of various social networks, messaging systems, communication tools and blogging packages, even though efforts have been made to consolidate these into packages, there’s still massive opportunity out there for further advancement.

We’ve got programs like TweetDeck or Trillian that try to bring together several networks and systems, but we are still missing the all seeing eye. I believe there’s massive potential out there for a program to bring together everything, acting as a hub for all your online personalised needs. And I’m not just taking about social networks; email, appointments, task management – your virtual digital world.

I was hoping Google Wave would go some way toward this, but in actual fact it merely tries to replace a number of these systems (while leaving some well alone) and I don’t think we’re at a stage where we’re ready to give these systems up yet, at least until a decent replacement is available (& Google Wave does not seem to be it).

The potential being; in the same vein as a program such as Tweetdeck or Seesmic, but much, much more powerful, with the potential to bring through and consolidate all information, streams, contacts, discussions, pictures and preferences into one master program. Microsoft did it with computers – who’s going to do with online systems?

Sound a bit scary? One program bringing everything together in one area for centralised management? Well we’ve kind of been doing this in the software and OS area for years. I don’t see any major concern.

Obviously there are the standard privacy concerns that go along with any personal data holding system online, but we’ve given up so much information to Google already anyway why should we mind? (our search patterns, website visitors, email contents, places we travel, and on and on…)

In my mind I don’t see how we are going to drastically advance in these areas unless we can bring these systems together. It’s the next BIG opportunity. Rather than adding features here and there, you still have to login, setup and manage multiple systems, and it can typically be the same information you’re managing across multiple networks multiple times.

The scope and potential for a single system is extreme.

A program that brings in your music history and preferences from last.fm or spotify, knowing what music you like, connecting to what friends are listening to, suggesting new artists and genres to try, up-coming gigs in your area that you might want to attend tailored exactly to your musical tastes.

A program that connects through and pulls out all your social network information, updates and feeds into one area. Friends & family information, photos, news, event and birthdays, all centralised in one area.

A program that imports all your various instant messenger details, allowing you to communicate through text or voice across any messenger network through one contact list, without the overhead of having to manage multiple programs and accounts. Linking through to all social network and other information.

A program that connects through with your online calendar and appointments, as well as pulling in events and birthdays from contacts across social networks to fully synchronise systems.

A program that imports emails across various accounts all into one area, filtering out work and friend information.

A program that manages tasks around work, contacts and home – relating back to calendar and contact information.

Just some of things that could be done. I’ve got a bit of a way with this through Google Calendar & Contacts, but we are still a long way off; it’s quite disjointed but is about the best we can do until things pull together more.

I know the complexity of building and managing a system such as this is high, but the payout of having all of this information manageable in one area would be priceless. All of your contacts completely synced together, communication available from anywhere in the world at any time, with all of your history and information readily available. A change in one system updates across all.

End of line.