Twitter your French life

I AM a big fan of using the web as a way to connect and link up people, something that I hope This French Life does.

That's why I leave the comments open on all the articles, link out to blogs and others on a regular basis and hope people take advantage of the forum to ask questions of others.

But one other method I've been experimenting with is Twitter, which is a mini blogging service that lets you follow what friends and colleagues are doing, as well as provide a useful way to exchange links.

Speed is the key with Twitter as you have a maximum of 140 characters to get your message across, this is helped a little by the fact that long website addresses are automatically shortened, but you still have to be succinct.

At the heart of the service is the opportunity to follow the messages of others, so should they post a question or a link to an interesting website you can reply directly to them, whilst you can highlight your reply to others and provide a bridging link between people.

And because some of your friends are likely to be interested in similar subjects then you not only highlight a web page that's interesting, a networking effect develops.

You can see my craigmcginty account on Twitter, which is currently full of friends I know from the world of online journalism.

But one person from France I follow is Richard Barley, who twitters under the name Richard Barley and he has been posting messages recently about his trip to the UK, festivals in the south west of France and from his tweets I now follow his website, La Vie en Foussais.

So if you want to try out Twitter, it's free, just sign up to an account and either send me a message through the service or drop me an email and I'll add you as a friend.

From there you will be able to follow my messages and others will be able to find out a little more about you - before you know it you'll be joining the twitterarti.

Comments

[wayne webster]

Hi Nice idea, as i find it too hard and time consuming to source an interesting group of people who share your life style.Just as a test i am an artist in NZ coming to paris for a holiday and would be interested in hanging out with some artists or visting their meeting places.
cheers wayne

[Craig McGinty]

Hi Wayne, I didn't write it here but you can both update your Twitter account fro your mobile phone, as well as receive messages to it, so it would suit someone out and about.
And drop in on my pal Susie's website for all thing Paris art:
http://www.ivyparisnews.com/
All the best, Craig

[Richard B]

Hi Craig!
Would you be able to update your post to point to my new twitter account? I have changed from aragornsbeard to richard_barley, but I still get some folks visiting via this post, so it would be good to send them to the right place.
Thanks in advance!

Richard
http://www.twitter.com/richard_barley