microblogging

Twitter For Dummies
$21.99
Twitter For Dummies should be called Twitter for Everyone. I may be considered a pretty heavy Twitter user and was #herebeforeoprah but even I really enjoyed getting into the heads of Laura @pistachio Fitton, Michael @gruen Gruen, and Leslie @geechee_girl Poston.

If I were to boil Twitter for Dummies down, I would say that you can't dumb down Laura, Michael, or Leslie -- they're leaders in Twitterville and you really cannot be disappointed if you grab the book.

For me, the entire book only took me the length of a Hollywood movie to read because I am pretty advanced; however, I must say that I they threw in kitchen sink in this book, extending into lesser-used features such as the Public Timeline and really geeky command-line access to Twitter such as "d chrisabraham" or "follow chrisabraham," etc.

In fact, there's a whole chapter on rocking Twitter via SMS text-messaging, something that may be less relevant to the Twitterati but is very important to 75% of all cell phone users (and yes, I did make up that nuber, I think it is closer to 90%) who don't rock smartphones -- just be sure to make sure you get the unlimited texts plan if you plan to go with SMS or you'll be screwed.

Of course, everything is covered and covered again and you really need to be a moron if you can't sort yourself out with Twitter by the end of Part III -- but this is Twitter for Dummies and not Twitter for Morons (and, publishers, I am super interested in writing that book -- also, Twitter for Effen Morons) so there you go -- it is what it is. (Strangely enough, however, is that there isn't one mention of my beloved Android G1 phone! There's mentions of the iPhone, the Blackberry, and even Javascript phones but where the hell's my G1! OK, I am done.)

Well, at the start of this review, I said this was all about Laura Fitton, Michael Gruen, and Leslie Poston, and it is, but there's not a whole lot of them in I-III chapters. Part IV is when all the good stuff comes a-pouring through. Who else but the best of the best would engage issues like "Finding Your Tweet Voice," "Twitter for Business," "The Social Side of Twitter," and "Changing the World, One Tweet at a Time."

This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to rename this book from "Twitter for Dummies" to "Twitter for Everyone: From Total Newbie to Total Rockstar."

twitter means business: how microblogging can help or hurt your company
$19.95
If you have little experience with Twitter, then this book will help you understand the impact that social media is having on business. having real-world examples of businesses using Twitter is an excellent method for teaching the reader about Twitter. The book is conversational (a quick read) and not written like a novel. I was going to lend this book to a friend, but I decided to keep it as a reference tool next to my computer. Well done!

The Twitter Book
$19.99
Because I was a history major in college, and am approaching 60 years old, I needed this basic text. It makes Twittering simple to do, and explains the proper etiquette for "twittering". Who would have thought that an Internet microblog site could be good for business?

For any skeptics of the power of the Internet, I say either get on board or get left behind.

William C. Head
Attorney at Law
Atlanta, GA
[...]

140Char
$0.99
Covering microblogging, including Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, Tumblr, Seesmic and Identi.ca, with developer interviews, application reviews, and general news and analysisKindle blogs are fully downloaded onto your Kindle so you can read them even when you're not wirelessly connected. And unlike RSS readers which often only provide headlines, blogs on Kindle give you full text content and images, and are updated wirelessly throughout the day.