Using twitter to make new friends

Using twitter to make new friends

Normally people sign up with twitter and read a book about it and then start using twitter support programs. I recommend the book The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein

Twitter is nice but even nicer if you use TweetDeck to interface to it. Just go to www.tweetdeck.com and sign up. Like Twitter, it’s is free.

Using twitter I find people with a common interest. Or I find people who are micro blogging (tweeting) about something I am interested in. I can search the vast twitter buzz for specific terms.

If you are not following anyone yet, then think of a topic you are interested in and a few search terms related to that, and enter them in the search box, or on Tweetdeck make a new column and enter the search terms for that column. To illustrate this I can use the 50s singer Buddy Holly. I love Buddy Holly and feel I could be at least somewhat interested in anyone who also appreciates Buddy Holly.

I typed in Buddy Holly and found lot of hits. I reviewed these looking for interesting posts with interesting profile pictures. I went to some of the associated twitter sites or associated websites and looked around.

I found someone interesting and sent them a reply to one of their tweets. This person said they miss Buddy Holly so I replied asking why. Maybe latter I will discover that this person has replied back (Yes, they have). In any case what I do is keep contacting Holly fans or find a new interest and search for that also.

Eventually I will get a conversation going with someone. When I follow someone I hope that they will follow me back. I will suggest that they follow me so we can send direct messages (DMs).

Latter I can write longer stuff on my blog and then send my new friends a link. By using Twitter, Tweetdeck and a Blog, I can communicate in depth. Latter we can exchange emails and then chat over Gmail/talk – a back and forth text based communication. Gmail/talk also allows voice and video. In some cases we may decide to use Skype which provides for desktop sharing.

If people get interested in me based on the initial replies they can look at my twitter page which will give them my profile and my blog URL. On my blog I list the topics that I Tweet about. This way people can get the big picture of what I am interested in: Friendships Online and Off: What makes them work.