A Twitter How To Guide

Though the initial, pressing Twitter question a while back wasn’t “what are you doing?” but “what’s the point?” people are finding lots of uses for it. In this installment of the ongoing what-Twitter-is-good-for news brigade, i will focus on how people are tweeting their way out of some things and into others. Ready?

Good.

How to Tweet Your Way Out of Jury Duty

Just as a federal judge in Florida had to declare a high profile drug case a mistrial because the jurors were using their smart phones to do research about the defendant, court officials across the country are discovering jurors are tweeting from the courthouse, discussing the case they’re hearing and giving updates. One Philadelphia juror went all citizen journalist by telling his Facebook friends to stay tuned for a big announcement on Monday. In another case, a lawsuit, one juror tweeted about giving away $12 million of somebody else's money.

So, no need to pretend to be a crazy Star Wars fanatic to get out of jury duty. Just be busily texting the entire selection process. Be sure to text the prosecutor you think tattoos are hot.

How to Tweet Your Way Out of a Job

Ok, I totally stole the title from the I’m Not Actually a Geek blog, where Hutch Carpenter details a couple of observed tweets. Somebody from Cisco was apparently listening when a job applicant tweeted about weighing a “fatty paycheck” against a daily commute and “hating the work.” Though the person deleted the tweet, apparently tweets are in Twitter cache forever.

Oops.

Meanwhile, one might be surprised George Stephanopoulos still has a job at ABC after conducting an interview with Sen. John McCain via Twitter. After some painful repetition and some digital geezer what-was-that-sons, Stephanopoulos proved it’s probably better to get a politician to say nothing on TV instead.

How to Tweet Your Way Into a Job

Be Nick Douglas. The former Valleywag writer has been chronicling the interesting things people tweet and, according to his former employer, landed a $50,000 advance from HarperCollins to put that tweet collection into book form. His biggest I’m-not-a-sellout challenge is to include only premium tweets of sufficient hilarity,go figure.

Well, it’ll be a good book for those with short attention spans anyway. If HarperCollins doesn’t put out a toilet paper roll version, they’re missing a golden opportunity. If you have a “twitticism” you’d like to contribute or if you just want to make Nick’s editing life hell, you can submit your best tweet to Twitterwit.net.

How to Tweet Your Way Into Filling Up Alotted Presentation Time

To demonstrate Twitter's real-timey feedback awesomeness, 10e20.com's Chris Winfield conducted a survey in front of a PubCon audience, asking followers about ways Twitter has helped them professionally and how to use Twitter to increase traffic. Over the course of an hour, Winfield displayed 165 tweeted responses, most of them serious.

How To Tweet Your Way Into People Not Liking You Anymore

Guy Kawasaki, former Apple evangelist, :P, and entrepreneurial web marketing all star has introduced TwitterHawk, an app that follows the Twitter conversation listening for mentions of things like coffee or shoes and then throws a promotional message at them. TwitterHawk charges five cents per message.

It would seem Kawasaki and company don’t consider this spam because of the great big Report Spam function where TwitterHawk promises to “follow up” with the offender. Is it spam? You be judge.

How to Tweet Your Way Into the Stock Market

StockTwits calls itself a “Bloomberg for the little guy and gal” and promises “not to spam you,” so they got that going for them. This service works like a realtime search engine for stock market information, allowing users to eavesdrop on stock-related tweets. They have a list of recommend Twitters to follow as well.

Speaking of useful Twitter apps, have you tried WebProNews’ Twellow yet? Twellow is a directory of Twitter users, like the yellow pages. Users can search for specific people on Twitter, or search for people in specific categories, or browse by industry. Registered users can claim their profile and add a bio. It’s a great way to find people who share your interests.

Know of any really useful Twitter apps? I would like to hear about it.Or you can just Tweet me..