Blogging is a great way to make your website dynamic. Indeed many artisans write blogs to highlight new products and to engage fans of their work. But blogging is like a hungry animal at times. It requires frequent updates if it is to stay alive. For many busy artisans, blogging might be too difficult or making jewelry is far more enjoyable than writing. There is an alternative called Twitter. It's a wildly popular micro-blogging platform. All you have to do is "tweet" - write a sentence or two in just 140 characters. You tweet to your friends and family via the computer or your mobile phone and share what you are doing at that moment. Here is a video explaining what Twitter is in Plain English :

   

It's another way to stay connected. You don't have to reply to any updates from the people you follow. Nor do you have to reciprocate if someone chooses to follow you. But like any social site, you can message somebody or search for a friend who might be on Twitter. If you want to follow me, my Twitter profile is Beadinggem. Most of the time I tweet my updated blog post links automatically through Twitterfeed but occasionally I tweet fun things. Those who caught my tweet over the Christmas break found out my favourite chocolates are Ferrero Rocher! Just to show you what the tweets look like, I did a search for "jewelry" and here is a screen shot of those tweets :

  twitter search jewelry Twitter may seem like something frivolous. Indeed some of you may be reacting with "What? Why bother?" Don't underestimate Twitter - hand held devices are fast changing the way we live our lives. Many people tweet from their cell phones because it is convenient and the messages are short. That cell phone tweets can broadcast breaking news faster than conventional means was recently demonstrated in the Mumbai terror attacks. Frightened guests trapped in the hotel rooms as well as their equally frantic family tweeted for help and information. You can read more about this woman's tweeting role here. On the other hand, rumors can also spread just as fast via Twitter. 
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