I studied Spanish for five years in junior high and high school. At the time, nearly all of my friends were from Spanish-speaking homes so I was able to practice the language regularly. I became mostly fluent. However, I graduated from high school over ten years ago and I have failed to realy practice my Spanish since that time. I keep trying to find new ways to practice it but nothing’s worked consistently so far. I am hoping that I just stumbled across the answer - perhaps I can use Twitter to practice my Spanish.

The problem with practicing is that I don’t do it regularly right now. I occasionally read books that are in Spanish with English translations. I sometimes watch movies in Spanish. Every once in awhile I’ll check out a Spanish class or group but then fail to follow through with it. I guess the truth is that I’m not committed enough to keeping up with my Spanish to consistently study and practice it.

However, I miss the Spanish language. I love Spanish. I think that there are some things that you can only really say in Spanish because the English equivalent doesn’t express the same type of emotion. And I don’t want to lose my Spanish. I’m actually surprised at how much I’ve retained over the years without too much practice and I know that it’s only a matter of time before I lose it all. As it stands now, my vocabulary is pretty good but my ability to conjugate verbs or speak in the correct tense is almost non-existent.

Enter Twitter. It occurred to me today that I could probably stick to a schedule of daily Spanish practice if I did it through Twitter. The short 140 character DM messages allowed by Twitter keep it concise enough that I can mostly understand what’s been said and I can respond promptly without much hassle. I have already found a few friends on Twitter that I can exchange thoughts with in Spanish. I would love to find some more!

Find me on Twitter @KathrynVercillo and send me a message en espanol!

As I’ve mentioned here before, I try to stay active on Twitter. After disliking it for quite awhile, I finally got pulled into using it daily. And I admit that I was wrong about it in the first place. It’s a great place to communicate with people on all different types of topics.

Some of the major types of people that I follow on Twitter include:

• Other writers. I’m happy to say that I’ve been included on two different lists of Top Writers to Follow on Twitter. I try to follow the other writers on both of these lists as well as bloggers and writers who aren’t on these lists but who are active on Twitter.
• Frugal living twitterers. I love learning about how to live frugally or to save money on different things so I follow a lot of people who offer tips about that.
• Mobile news writers. I like learning about mobile phone news. Cell phone twitterers really help with that.

Some people that I exchange thoughts with on the site really stand out because they offer good conversation throughout the work day. Ten of those that I’d recommend are:

1. @allison_w
2. @marcofratelli
3. @inksnatcher
4. @ebwriters
5. @BillHarper
6. @JessicaWard
7. @henpow2nd
8. @bekkal
9. @moneywatch
10. @texaswriter

Who do you follow on Twitter?

I’ve mentioned here a few times that I’m trying to stay active on Twitter. This can be hard sometimes because there are so many people on Twitter who are there just to spam you. (I can’t even count the number of posts I see about how to get more Twitter followers - more people who will just keep posting those same posts about getting more followers!)

However, there are some people on Twitter that I really enjoy conversing with. These people bring great thoughts to the Twitter table and I enjoy hearing what they have to say. They also offer good links that I actually want to follow.

Here’s a few of those people to check out if you want some good conversation on Twitter:

• @dragonblogger - I mentioned this Twitter user here not too long ago because he does a really cool thing where he gets random words from fellow Twitter users and writes Twitter poems with them.
• @Scout66com - This is the only music blogger or music site that I’ve seen so far that doesn’t just promote music but also engages in intelligent discussino on a range of topics!
• @kashicat - Check out the blog Confessions of a Cultural Idiot to learn more about this cool Twitterer.
• @marcandangel - They share life advice on their blog and through their Twitter account.
• @spreadingjoy - The name says it all but there’s a corporation to go along with this Twitter account.

Who do you recommend following on Twitter?

Another link that might be of interest to people on Twitter is this article with links to over 100 different Twitter tools including tools for analysis, information gathering, networking building and sharing.

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time on Twitter lately. After a lengthy period of adjusting to using the site, I’ve finally come to really like Twitter. I feel like it’s giving me a great opportunity to share links and ideas with other people.

One of the really fun things that I’ve gotten into doing on the site is participating in a daily poem project that @dragonblogger does. Almost every morning, he puts out a request for people to send in random words. These random words are then worked into a poem for the day which is posted on the Wanderer Thoughts blog.

These poems are always really interesting. Sometimes the words that are submitted are really challenging. For example, check out Unstoppable Disease which included a lot of medical words in it. (My word for that day was simpler: productivity).

This is just a fun little project to participate in when I think about it as I’m on Twitter. I think it’s inspiring to do little daily projects and this is an example of a good one.

I used to have a love/hate relationship with Twitter. Over time, that has changed. I lean a lot more towards the love side now. I suppose that’s because I’ve learned how to use Twitter in ways that make it fun for me. I meet people and share information there.

I actually do a lot of my research through Twitter, using it as a starting point to find news and articles about the topics that interest me. For example, I stay on top of the latest information and thoughts about mobile phones by following people on Twitter who write about these things.

There are so many people writing about this topic that it would be impossible to follow them all. I’ve found about 20 mobile phone Twitterers that really interest me a lot. These are what I would suggest as a starting place for people interested in researching that topic on Twitter.

Of course, you can make a list like this for any interest that you may have. I also follow people on Twitter who are interested in personal finance, simple living and creativity since those are topics that also interest me a lot. I think it’s worthwhile to take the time to find the people who are networking on these topics and to follow their activities online.

My Twitter account is at http://twitter.com/KathrynVercillo.

I was one of the early members of MySpace. My account lay dormant for years since nobody I knew was active on the site. Then, all of a sudden, everyone that I knew was signing up for a MySpace account. For about a year, I communicated actively there. I even had multiple accounts - for work and for personal use. Then a couple of years ago Facebook seemed to take the place of MySpace and my activity on MySpace slowly dwindled down to almost nothing.

I’ve kept my account active just in case MySpace suddenly becomes big again but these days I mostly use Facebook and Twitter for social networking. Thinking about this got me wondering whether any businesses are using MySpace for marketing anymore? I did some research into this question and found that there are a few types of businesses that are still active on the site.

Music businesses are the main business that still seems to do okay here as compared to Facebook or Twitter. Other entertainment businesses, like comedians, are active on the site to some degree as well. And then there are the businesses that market specifically to the tween/teen demographic that is still regularly using MySpace to communicate. Other than that, most businesses seem to be focusing their social networking promotion elsewhere.

Does this mean that businesses who choose to reactive their attention on MySpace could potentially corner the market on users still regularly active on the site?

I am active on Twitter. I post to Twitter daily. I have four different RSS feeds that add my blog content to Twitter throughout the day. I have about 400 Twitter followers and follow about that many people. I am starting to make use of Twitter clients and Twitter tools like TweetDeck. I link my Twitter account in various ways to other social networking sites that I’m on.

And yet, the fact of the matter is that I don’t love Twitter. Or maybe I do.

For the most part, I don’t enjoy Twitter. I don’t like the format that it’s in because it seems messy and complicated and overwhelming. Even with the use of Twitter clients, I don’t find Twitter to be friendly on the eyes (or the brain). I also don’t like that Twitter seems to be most effective as a tool for blog traffic if you’re following tons of people but that means that you’ve got to look at Twitter updates every few seconds because there are so many people posting all of the time.

But there’s definitely something that draws me to Twitter. It’s addictive. It’s interesting. I can see what people are thinking about all of the time. I get links to information that I wouldn’t otherwise have seen. I feel connected to the world around me by virtue of the fact that we’re chatting online even though I see a level of superficiality to all of that online communication.

You know, come to think of it, my love/hate relationship with Twitter is a lot like my love/hate relationship with the city of Las Vegas. I don’t like Las Vegas much. It’s overstimulating and overwhelming and superficial in so many ways. But I go to Vegas fairly often because it’s a convenient vacation, most of what I want from a trip can be found there and the benefits of traveling there sometimes outweigh the negatives of the experience. Now if only Twitter had showgirls and slots … you know, I bet if I looked around, it might.

I wrote an article earlier today over at my Real Words blog all about how I’ve seen a recent shift in the way that my online social networking communication is taking place. In the past, I’ve had two types of connections online. First, there were my friends in real life who I chatted about normal stuff with on sites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. And then there were people who I know only from online who would add me to those sites just to send me links to their online work.

What I’ve noticed recently is that more and more people on these sites are truly interested in starting real conversations. The line between my real life friends and my online friends is starting to blur. People I don’t know are asking me how my day is going and responding to my general status updates. They are inviting me to meet them in the real world or at least expressing an interest in knowing what my real world is like.

At the same time, my real world friendships are getting closer as a result of staying more frequently updated with everyone’s activities online. I know that this revelation isn’t new - many people have experienced this with online social networking. But I still sense an even greater shift in this going on right now, at least in my own life, and I’m excited to see how it develops.

I’m still trying to get the hang of using Twitter. I really didn’t like the site when it first came out. However, since it was the online social networking tool that everyone was using, I realized that I needed to get on board if I was going to keep staying in touch with the people who I communicate with online. I signed up for an account and started playing around with it.

The truth is that I’m still adjusting to Twitter and I don’t know if I like it much yet. I feel like I don’t quite “get it”. I have a hard time staying on top of conversations with people on the site since updates are so frequent. But the more I use it, the more I get used to it so it gets easier to understand which makes me like it a little bit more.

One of the things that made me feel like the site had gotten easier to use was discovering TwitterFeed. Before discovering that tool, I was trying to update Twitter manually with all of my various blog posts and articles. It was time-consuming and kind of felt like a waste of time.

Now that I use TwitterFeed, the posts update automatically to Twitter. This way, I can use my time on Twitter to actually respond to people and to post updates that I actually specifically want to share with my Twitter friends.

I’m still learning the best tools for communicating on the site. I’m still playing around with when to use @Replies and when to use direct replies. But I’m getting there. Anyone who has specific tips on the use of Twitter in conjunction with blogging is more than welcome to comment here!