I’ve been using Twitter for quite some time now and even if I am, quite possibly, one of the biggest Twittervangelist out there, I sometimes get tired of dicking around a medium whose purpose seems to be limited to sharing real-time brain farts, idle, incoherent blabbering and general blather to your friends and anyone who has time to burn reading inane musings of people they hardly even know.

But being a certified Fanboi, I will forgo the long, substantive essay I am tempted to write to justify and explain why I continue to use Twitter because face it, the issue of “To Twitter or not to Twitter” is beat. And really, why should I even bother when far better writers have written their respective cases against twitter and pieces in its defense?

Besides, for every argument rebuking its asininity, there’s one that praises its merits.

There is, however, more to Twitter than broadcasting how awesome the fillet mignon you had for dinner was or how bored you are out of your fucking skull to your followers. Let’s take a look at some of its alternative uses.

1.) Mini-Blog / Aside

A lot of comparisons has been thrown around between Twitter and its supposed predecessors IRC or Citizen’s Band radio but In my opinion, Twitter is more of a Micro Blog than it is the former two. If you’re anything like me, you write granular posts on your blog discussing a specific topic. And if you have a sizable following keeping tabs on your blog and your thoughts for that matter, they won’t be getting any updates until your next post.

Thanks to Twitter’ beautiful badges, and Wordpress plugins like Alex King’s Twitter tools and Dave Kellam’s TwiterRss, you can embed your recent tweets to your site for your all your viewer’s to see.Now, you can argue that there are already plugins made which better handle Asides, but really, how convenient are those compared to say, updating from IM or Twiterrific?

2.) Article Dissemination

Speaking of Alex King’s Twitter tools, supposing you don’t use Twitter to post tweets, you can use it to let your followers know about every new post you post on your blog or edits you make to them.

Not to mention services like TwitThis which adds an eponymous button to your web site or blog allowing visitors to easily share it with their Twitter friends viewing. (Via LifeHacker)

3.) Twitter as a reminder service

You can use Twitter to send you reminders at specific intervals. You can do this by sending a direct message to a user named “timer” on twitter with the following syntax: d timer [number of minutes] [reminder] and twitter will send you a private message with the reminder you’ve inputed.If you’re one of those people who receive Twitter messages on your phone, this is a great way to set and receive reminders on the fly using Twitter as a robust command line. (Via Retweet)

Alternatively, you can use Twitter with Remember the Milk or GCal to do this.

4.) Low-cost Group Texting

The first thing that needs to be done is to register to Twitter, its a straightforward process and actually a no-brainer. All one need is an email address and that’s it. Then, once registered, go to the “Settings” link and choose “Phone & IM” option. On that page, a Twitter user can enter a cellphone number where Twitter notifications can be sent. I chose my backup phone equipped with a prepaid SIM card so as not to flood my primary cellphone with Twitter updates. Once registered, Twitter will then ask for a confirmation SMS that you’ll need to send to their server — this will be the only expense one needs to spend for this kuripotechie exercise. (WARNING: Sending the confirmation message via SMS costs Php 15 pesos!). Once properly configured, go to the “Notification” options under the Settings page and configure how you want to be notified. The options available are via email, web or SMS.Invite your friends to use Twitter and once you have a circle of friends on the service and you happen to want to send a message to all your friends, you can send that message to Twitter and their cellphones will receive it (if they also follow the steps shown above).

As I’ve said, I directed all SMS notifications from Twitter to my backup phone so I know that each time my backup phone receives a message, I know that the message is probably coming from Twitter. (via PWiT)

Anything I missed? How do you use Twitter?

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