Last year I posted about my lack of understanding for Twitter. It seemed so pointless and I couldn’t derive a reason why I would actually want to use it. Yet, I kept reading articles and posts about how people just loved the service, so I stopped boycotting in May of last year. I first hopped on and connected with some Utah entrepreneurs and would chat with them on sporadic occasion. Then I started hopping on a somewhat more regular basis, to be honest, just to use the widget on my blog as I liked having the little updates next to my real post (I now what to implement Tumblr as well, but they haven’t made their own widgets. That is a whole other post…). He he… horrible reason I know. Then, I went to SXSW and my understanding of Twitter completely changed.

Twitter in a conference setting is invaluable! Everyday I met all these people and wanted to catch up at panels, meetings, dinner, etc. Rather than putting a phone number in my phone, I could easily connect on twitter and follow their updates by phone during the duration of the conference. Then on the way home, I switched the settings so that I could still see their updates by web only.

Yet I continue to see the value on a daily basis, which is increased by the more folks I follow. I notice that through my updates I get good leads (in real time) about something I might find useful. Or I see interesting feedback if I throw out an open ended question. For instance, the other day I threw out the following questions (I am @WasatchGirl) and received the following answers:

@WasatchGirl “ I just learned in a company pitch that 20% of cell phone users do not have a land line. I fall into this group. What about you?”

@CharlieOliver No landline here, same for at least a dozen people I know (they do have cells)

@yuricake totally

@MelissaKing I got rid of mine over a year ago & I can’t say I missed it all that much

@tamineedham I have to have a land line, no service bars in my house…

@tweetipFH re : no land line ~ no voice landline for 8 years…

@Kalei I have 5 cell phones, no land lines.

@humancell I have a landline … that is the number that I give when I have to provide a number, but I really don’t want to hear from them

@selves somewhat, company pays my landline/inet/&cell, so i don’t really count.

@WasatchGirl “ What type of value do you derive from Twitter? Examples?”

@Kalei From Twitter I get: real-time news events, news from Hawaii, new links/websites, keep in touch w/family, & entertainment!

@tweetipFH ~ realtime truth on breaking news, where ever it is in the World…
~ twitter helps restore our gut “filtering” of what doesn’t feel right…
~ within a few tweets of 140 chars, the truth emerges, from earthquakes to twitter ads

And then I learned the other day how to start doing searches on Twitter and read this post by Charlie on how to actually track certain words.

If you haven’t checked out Twitter yet, here is an easy to understand video to get you started.