What Exactly is Twitter?

[☮WeAreInfinite☮]

I have a friend who just got Twitter and wants me to, also. What exactly is it? Is it similar to Facebook? Can you have settings for that nobody but your friends can see your posts? Would you consider it "secure"? Would you suggest it over Facebook?

[Adil Yanouri]

It's kinda like Facebook, but only the status and status-updating part.

Yes, you can have privacy-settings, and it is safe.

Personally I don't use it because all of my friends use Facebook, and I don't need 2 things that do the same thing.

Edit:
Forgot to say, with Twitter you can 'follow' somebodies 'tweets' (like status-updates). So if they tweet something, you get like a notification.
You can also follow strangers and celebrities.

[brayden]

Twitter is a social network but it is nothing like facebook. It's like a big chat room, so to speak, and you're just making comments (comments about anything, whatever is on your mind) and then people either reply to your comment or ignore it.

If people are interested in what you say then they "follow" you. If you are interested in what people say then you "follow" them. What that means is, if you "follow" people, then comments they make appear on your twitter when you log in. So you can see things they've said, in other words. And if you want to comment, then you reply to it.

You can set your twitter to private so that nobody can read your comments except people that you allow to follow you.

Why don't you go to twitter and look around? Then you can see what it is like. You don't have to join to be able to look around. Just type something in their search box -- something that interests you -- and then all of the people who are interested in that will appear and you can click on a comment they've made and then you'll see what the tweet deck looks like.

I personally like twitter but it's not for everyone.