Twitter: A Favorite Social Media Resource

I am a self-professed Twitter lover, as anyone who knows me well will confirm. Unfortunately, most of these people are the same ones who don't understand why. If you are yourself a Twitter lover, I'm sure you can fully relate to the misunderstanding that Twitter is a silly waste of time. For those of you who aren't convinced, I've compiled a list of ways I use Twitter as a valuable resource:

• A source for the latest news/sites/links/Web content: Many of the people I follow on Twitter are active social media players - bloggers, PR professionals, tech-enthusiasts. Therefore, the tinyurl's they share are usually useful for me to check out. My logic is, if the people I interact with and respect on Twitter think something is important and worth a click, chances are I will, too! And, if I don't have the time to check out a suggested link right away, Twitter also acts as a great bookmarking tool - I can add the tweet to my favorites and reference it later!

• Immediate feedback/advice: Twitter folk are constantly tweeting. If I have an issue I want to poll people about, Twitter is a great place to do it. My recent personal struggle about whether to transfer my blog from Blogger to Wordpress, for example, has spawned an outpouring of input from my Twitter entourage (note: the jury - me - is still out regarding the potential platform switch).

• Timely answers to my questions: Somewhat related to my second bullet point, my Twitter stream is a great question/answer forum. Just today, @mjkeliher, @TDefren and I were discussing some issues we had with FriendFeed, and @bmorrissey piped in with the answer to our prayers:

• Networking: My Twitterati is a valuable network. Through them, I can connect and interact with important people. They refer me, and I refer them. Twitter makes people easily approachable (as if social media mavens weren't already approachable ;o). It's not uncommon but absolutely welcomed to chat with people you've never talked to or met before. Via Twitter, your network can grow at an almost unbelievable rate.
  

• Live-tweets and event coverage: Twitter has become a wonderful place to track events occurring IRL. The Twitter coverage of SXSW is a noteworthy example of this. Yesterday, I was thankful enough to be following some attendees of the social media forum that took place at Emerson College, whose thorough live-tweets kept me up-to-date with the panel discussion right from my bedroom!
  

• Self-promotion: Are you trying to recruit attendance to an event or promote traffic to your blog? Tweet it! Recently, I've come away with some awesome tips from Chris Brogan's guest post on Problogger on how to use Twitter to promote my blog.
  

Besides all of these resourceful ways to use Twitter, I also get a lot of enjoyment out of the 140-character Twitter-treats my Twitterati posts. They have the tendency to be pretty witty sometimes, and even though it may be trivial, it's fun to hear about their crazy skiing adventures or their victory in baking the perfect pie.

Currently, my flip phone is not very Twitter-friendly. I'm eying some Blackberries - you can imagine my tweeting frequency will only increase once I get my hands on one of those.

What are some other effective ways you use Twitter?