Journos not twittering enough

I wrote a post a while back on my personal blog, highlighting the lack of journalists on Twitter. Today, thanks to Marie Boran (AKA PixieVonDust), I read with great interest that Charles Cooper from CNET is of the same opinion. Charles goes as far as to say

Out of curiosity, I drew up a list of 55 technology journalists to find out how many use Twitter, arguably one of the most important social-media technologies on the scene.

If you’re not familiar with Twitter, think of it as a conversational tool come micro blogging platform from a technology perspective. I also think of it as a community of early adopters, of whom, some are very influential with a passion for sharing. It’s a community you can communicate with via the Web site, desktop client or mobile phone (either by SMS or application). So, it’s very accessible. You can subscribe to alerts too, which means you get notified any time someone ‘tweets’ a message.

Twitter has almost replaced my RSS reader completely and to a degree, my reliance on Google to find stuff. If I want to find out the latest gossip, ask for advice on how to use something new, or find the latest world news, I head straight for Twitter.com and scroll through all the conversations for the past few hours.

I was in New York recently to take part in a panel discussion about Mobile TV. Whenever I wanted a recommendation for a restaurant within walking distance, or the address of a specific clothes shop, I turned to my Twitter community. Within minutes I had the answers to any question I asked. Some people went as far as to Google restaurants and read the reviews before making recommendations to me.

A couple of people actually few from California to New York to meet me after connecting on Twitter. It doesn’t get better than that.

So, if you’re not already on there, setup an account now and search for people you know. Check out who they follow as they’re likely to be connected to people you know. Don’t subscribe to too many people at once. Make sure some of them become a follower of you or you’ll end up looking like a stalker, and nobody will follow you. Don’t limit yourself to only people you know. It’s a fantastic way to get to know new people around the world too. Are you on Twitter already?

Read the full article on CNET.

Connect to me on Twitter let me know if you’ve followed me after reading this post so I know where you’ve come from.