Ready to tweet?

1. Start a Twitter account at www.twitter.com.

2. Find friends, businesses and words related to you
      or your business through Twitter Search.

3. Write interesting things about you, your businesses
      or just interesting things in general.

4. Share links to interesting websites, events and
      worthy organizations.

5. Build your network, interests, ideas and knowledge.

Simplicity rules when it comes to garnering information in this day and age, and because of that, many times privacy is out the window, especially with new social networking and microblogging services like Twitter.

Because of the ease of use and real time effectiveness, grieving people twitter about funerals, husbands twitter about the birth of their children and politicians twitter about opinions. It is effective to many, obnoxious to some and very much a new pace in the world of technology.

Twitter is a service that allows twitterers (those who tweet) to tell pretty much the world what they are doing by sending short text messages 140 characters maximum in length to friends or followers via mobile texting, instant messages or the web at the exact moment they are doing it. The short format can lead toward too much information, like what the twitterer is eating for breakfast, along with too, too much information like what they just did in the bathroom. Tweets are displayed on a profile page, on the home page of each follower and in the twitter public timeline (unless you chose to make your tweets private). Twittiquette, or Twitter etiquette, looks at what to do and what not to do on the microblogging site, but more recently, some have wondered what is socially acceptable when using Twitter, and whether it should be used in every situation.

While some twitterers can be annoying with their tweets or tweet something socially unacceptable to some, Twitter allows people to stay connected with friends, relatives and coworkers at their own pace, keeping track of information that never requires a response or even attention. Users are in control of whose updates they receive, when they receive them and on what device. The social networking giant has also taken over businesses, with more and more business owners and their employees signing up as a way to get their name out, find more followers or gain insight in the business.

Twitterers can thank founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams, both in their 30s, for the short format that allows informal collaboration and quick information sharing with people all over the world from breaking world news to updates from friends (even if that update is happening from the bathroom.)