By W.G.T.Fernando

Twitter has been in existence since 2006 but yet I only created my own twitter account in February of 2009 (you can see exact date by visiting http://www.whendidyoujointwitter.com and typing my account name ‘gihangamos’). That was also the month we created this magazine (http://diGIT.lk) and when I received a very friendly email from a fellow Sri Lankan who was living in USA. She gave us words of encouragement and suggestions to improve the readership of diGIT. That’s when she also suggested I should join the twitter club or as Shel would put it, ‘land in Twitterville’. I am grateful to Sukanti Husain for her kind words of encouragement which has given strength to the diGIT magazine and has helped in reaching out to the right readership for the magazine. 

So what’s so great about twitter you would ask? A good question and a question which has a million answers. As Shel puts it in his book, each of us use Twitter in our own unique way, which is why we all have different followers.

What makes twitter great is in how well you want to make twitter your companion. The book gives us great examples (stories) on how people have used twitter in times of crisis or how people have resolved customer care issues and got back faith in a company. 

It’s worth mentioning that Shel is humble enough to suggest Chris Brogan (a fellow social media writer) as the mayor of ‘Twitterville’. Shel justifies his decision purely on the fact that Chris is everywhere, as a mayor should be looking after the people of the city. I too follow Chris on twitter (@chrisBrogan) and its true. Chris has written and continues to blog post almost every day with many of them focusing on tips to businesses to use social media. Shel points out how Chris once (in Feb 2009) ended up shaving his head so that kids could get laptop computers that they could not afford! You should definitely read the book to see what initially led to him shaving his head.

He also coins a term ‘braided journalism’ which in his own words is ‘convergence of old and new media’ reflecting on the influence blogs and micro blogs such as twitter has on newspapers, specially the dailies. He gives us insight into a few tweeters who became ‘citizen journalists’ in times of adversity (such as when Katrina was hit or when Mumbai was hit with terrorists).  

As James Governor (cofounder RedMonk) says Twitterville ‘is a marketplace of ideas, thoughts and prejudices. It’s where people live declaratively, which creates opportunities and challenges for companies of all shapes and sizes.’ Shel has clearly brought out that in his book.