Follow us on Twitter - WAFB 9 News Baton Rouge, Louisiana News, Weather, Sports

Follow us on Twitter

Are you on Twitter yet? Well we sure are and we'd love for you to join us, or more appropriately ... follow us! Here are all the people at WAFB who are updating on Twitter:

WAFB TV - Get early morning weather, breaking news, traffic updates ... anything we can think of that might be worthy of a text message. (twitter.com/wafb)

WAFB9Sports - The sports arm of our WAFB Twitter Family with messages throughout the day on your favorite Louisiana teams. Maybe even a score or two. (twitter.com/wafb9sports)

WAFBweather - The 9 Storm Team keeps you up to date on the latest weather developments, including any pending severe storms, tropical systems, wintry weather and more! (twitter.com/WAFBweather)

9News This Morning - Find out what's going on with the #1 morning team in Baton Rouge. (twitter.com/9thismorning) 

CherylMercedes - What is WAFB's Cheryl Mercedes up to on the web? She'll keep you up to date ... and interested! (twitter.com/CherylMercedes)

WAFBTraffic - Traffic alerts that will help you avoid delays due to accidents, construction, or other traffic hindrances. (twitter.com/WAFBTraffic)

So, what is Twitter?

Don't think of Twitter as another social networking site like MySpace or Facebook. Think of it as a tool, like the telephone or email or text messaging.

Twitter has a silly name, but then again, so does Google. What Twitter offers are news feeds for individuals. People can share links and ideas or ask questions and offer advice in a steady stream of updates limited to 140 characters each.

Others can reply to those updates, or resend them.

The people who use Twitter can send updates from their computers or their phones, and those updates appear will appear instantly.

Sometimes, these updates are mundane, sometimes they are useful. It's up to the individual.

Reporters send updates about what they are working on. Celebrities send updates about current projects. Businessmen provide insight into their companies. Politicians discuss policy and legislation. Your friends might talk about what they had for lunch, or how what they think of the movie they just saw.

You choose who to follow, just like other choose whether or not to follow you.

The character limit is based on the standard limit on text messages from cell phones, which are usually 160 characters. The creators of Twitter left some room for the user's name.

Because these updates are so short, Twitter is sometimes called a microblogging tool.

The real power of Twitter is how people use it during events when many people get together and start sending updates about a single topic - a plane crash, a breaking news story, a new product, and so on. Often, during events like those, people from within the story will send out updates from the scene.

Twitter is also searchable, which means you can look for updates about specific topics, people or events and see results in real time from thousands of individuals.

Here are some useful links once you get started at http://www.twitter.com/:

Twitter search - just like Google, but only for Twitter updates

Twitturly - the latest links sent out using Twitter organized by popularity

Twitter visualizations - unique graphs and other ways to see what people are saying

Hashtags - topics assigned a hash (#) so people can quickly organize a conversation