Do you tweet? This post might not be for those who know what I am talking about. For the rest who have either heard a lot about this new thing on the Web—Twitter—but have no idea about it or have no clue at all what I am talking about, here is a beginner's guide to this Web2.0 social tool which has become a fad among techies and early-adopters.

It has been used to break news of an aircraft crash-landing in the Hudson river in the US. It is being used by fans to know their celebrity actor (Shahrukh Khan?—not verified), author (Paulo Coelho) or politician (Barack Obama) better, even have a nice chit-chat. Or to let your mom know what you are doing. It has also allowed gangs of friends to remain "hyper-connected", as the Twitter people say.

What is Twitter? Twitter is free micro-blogging service which also doubles as a very powerful social networking platform. Twitter users post updates about whatever they are doing in short and crisp messages, or tweets, that cannot exceed 140 characters. The act of updating your whereabouts, or tweets, is called twittering; the users are often called tweeterers or tweetfolks. There may be many more term for a person who actively uses Twitter.

How do you get started? You sign up for a free Twitter account on http://twitter.com to get your own account. Now, as a Twitter user, you are supposed to keep return back to this site as often as possible and answer the question—what are you doing? If you have a Internet-enabled smart phone, you can use any of the apps available to access and use Twitter.

Twitter users in the US, the UK , Canada or India can also tweet using text messages, or SMS.

Follow and be followed. Unlike other social networking tools such as Facebook, Orkut and MySpace, you don't make friends with anyone on Twitter. Here you follow some one. In plain words, you subscribe to the person's tweets or messages. Just search for the person and choose “Follow” option. Reciprocally, the person being followed may also choose to follow your messages. In case you do not want someone to get your updates, you can block the user.

This means if you wish to follow Barack Obama, you are free to do so. Obama may also opt to follow you but I doubt if he manages to read even one-tenth, or even one-hundredth, of the tweets that must be pouring into his account every day. Obama is followed by 273,594 people and follows 268,163 people.

PS: This is the first part of a series on Twitter. Please keep reading for more in the series.

Twitter series:
Part1: Birds of same feather tweet together
Part2: Learning the language of Twitter
Part3: Twittering? Get clients for latest updates
Part4: Be highly mobile with Twitter