What is the point of twittering and does anyone have an account on twitter.com?

[Seamonkey]

Well my first introduction was through a podcast I listened to - they started a website with a forum, so that's like a little community - then they started up a laconica server, and I got an identi.ca account - so we're all in touch. Now I know what people who listen to the podcast are doing, thinking - and they give me ideas related to the podcast (as a linux user, it generally revolves around problems and issues relating to me)

Twitter is different in that you can't set up your own server - it is closed, and if you leave it behind, you leave your friends behind - it's closed source. Having said that, everyone is on there. Stephen Fry just got in a taxi and is probably just boarding his flight to Singapore.

You can subscribe to anyone. The best way to find out is to follow my link here - you can make an account on both of these, use the same name/password for each, and then just watch and explore.

I've got lots of people listening to me, including StephenFry. I occasionally type in there a message saying what I'm doing - example 'can't work out how to fix identibash' and instantly got a reply which helped me to fix it (and I couldn't find anything at that time on internet. Now if you search, you'll probably find the solution)

It's nothing like instant messaging, but it's pretty current. It's a bit like a blog - which you may or may not have been interested in (for me listening to a podcast it is nice to have a chance to comment and answer points)

Currently, I run a shortcut launcher called gnome-do (works a bit like launchy) which means I can hit Alt+Space and quickly type in something - and I have software (Gwibber is my favourite, but I've tried spaz and others...) but can also keep it running in tabs in my Firefox browser.

Just try it, it's far superior to Facebook and Myspace. For a start, you only click links you want to click. You don't have to load horrible heavy flashy webpages.

You can simply leave it running and ignore it, check for messages written to you.

If you log in, please say hi to me

just type:

@ben2talk - thanks for the tip (from Yahoo Answers)

I find identica offers good privacy for me, but if you notice - all my posts appear to people who use Twitter. (That's what it means 'Twitter is closed' - nobody else can hear you, but with an open format, it does all - I see all and receive all by using identi.ca to post to both accounts)