Twitter?

Sadly some people don't get that escape part.

How many people do you see riding a bike and yapping on a phone or even texting while riding...

& I cringe at the coffee stop when the Blackberries all start emerging.

I'm just getting into Twitter, its a great way of hearing whats going on as it happens, and depending on who you follow there are some quite interesting and funny people out there. It's also a quick way to keep in touch or contact with friends on there

@bradwiggins and @Vaughters are a good pair to follow

Feel free to follow me too, @davidcwhitfield I promise I won't post 6 tweets at once or anything annoying like that

I guess these days it is too hard to ignore the social networking scene if you spend any length of time on the net.

I think the key thing to remember though is they are only tools and as such should be used for the task or job they are designed for.

As interesting as it may be to some about what you just made for dinner, I think some people need to realise people are possibly more interested in things with a bit more substance.

I guess the advantage with Twitter is you can stop following someone when they start posting inane items all day long when they have little else to do?

Personally I do not see the need for Twitter. Why do I need to create an account and start saying normal things from about my daily activity on a website? Why do I think people would be interested? Why do I need to make friends on the internet? Why do I need to follow the crowd? Why do I need to surrender my privacy? I mean really, don't we all have better things to do?

I use Twitter for personal and professional reasons. One of the things I have most enjoyed is finding local cyclists and seeing what they're up to, what they're commute is like and marvelling at some of their tales.

Can't say I'm as interesting to follow, but it's 140 characters, you're not reading an uninteresting blog are you?

Plus there's also some good competitions to win free schwag I hear.

@Andyyk

When it works, Twitter works really well. We managed to get all the news and results from the UCI Track World Cup Rounds together with one hashtag (#trackworldcup) which meant it was really easy to find out what was going on when there was no TV coverage to follow.

USGS have a brilliant system going where they use searches on words like 'quake' and 'tremor' to pinpoint earthquakes as well.

The multiple posting irritant is transformed into a bonus if you have twitter client like tweetdeck

yeah I enjoy Chris Boardman's Tweets

@demoff is me, I use it like a mini blog and post whatever is in my head at the time. I have one post on my proper blog and find twitter ideal for the lazy blogger.

Yes I will tweet what I am having for breakfast sometimes, I also post links to stuff I find that I think will interest others.

Can live with the mass morning tweet from roadcc its the radioactive wiggle ad that bugs me at the mo.

Who to follow

He is sometimes infrequent but @FakeCav is funny.
@VecchioJo is of course worth a follow as is
@markrenshaw1 @mickrogers @DanFleeman and @Chris_Boardman posts some good stuff.

Quote:

I am not a fan of someone posting several items at once either. @Tony, how about 3 at a time first thing then 3 more a bit later?

It often is that way Simon, but if we post stories late at night plus there's three or four first thing in the morning we need to tweet them asap old news loses its value. Probably a bit later we'll tweet any overnight/early morning blogs, but most of that will be before 9 o'clock - we are at our keyboards early so I suppose even though they might look spaced out in our twitter feed they might not in yours if you haven't had any other early morning tweets.

Depending on how many people someone following road.cc is following any late night tweets we make will have long gone by the morning so people who weren't on twitter then might well miss them - they're long gone from our screen - and as I say, posting a block of tweets does seem to work first thing. Equally there's no point saving news up during the day so we always try and tweet as we post… unless we forget.

Besides us who are you following at the moment Statto?

STATO, I routinely browse who someone is following as it sometimes unearths people you wouldn't otherwise have thought of. I'll look for Endura now you've mentioned them.

Having looked at Orbea-FGS I luurve the uncluttered team jerseys (by ShuttVR) the riders are wearing in this training video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkMLHYETkqk
Nice bikes and gorgeous weather too, I'm so jealous!

The comic's tweets are often for their online news items but that's fine by me, and they're one of the the first with racing news. Lionelbirnie's own tweets are worth a look now and then too.

I am not a fan of someone posting several items at once either. @Tony, how about 3 at a time first thing then 3 more a bit later?

I follow a handful until I get bored. Tried Met Office but it only tells me about weather warnings, but I watch the forecast anyway. I like newsy stuff - cyclingweekly, BCreports, fareground and other local food/event folks. I'd include roadcc but as I already drop in here every day there's no need.

I tried pro cyclists (bradwiggins, Greghenderson1, mcewenrobbie, cxhelen among others) but it can get boring after a while. I like Robbie. Brad has occasionally tweeted something funny/dry but not enough to follow. Never felt the need to follow celebs such as Stephen Fry (up his own ar5e IMO) and a certain Texan cyclist.

Perhaps young riders like Ben Swift (swiftybswift) might be worth checking, and now the season is under way some teams too e.g. BMCproteam, Orbea_FGS.

I prefer news & blog sites, which usually publish content rather than one person's navel-gazing / idleness / personal hygiene notes.

Six stories in one go! You know why we do that? Cos they generate a lot more traffic at the start of the day posted as a block than as individual tweets

Aside from the fact that we usually have a lot of new stories to tweet about at the start of the day.

To paraphrase Eryka Badu, I'm an analogue boy in a digital world.

I had a Facebook account created for me by my wife about 6 months ago, as it was the suggested way of keeping in touch with Flavio Zappi (cycling club) after years of slating it for being thoroughly pointless. Well, after 6 months of being a user, I will be deleting that very soon!

Twitter is just an even more accentuated version of that pointlessness to me.

I like my watches to be wind-up, my stereo has one knob (for volume control), and had to be forced to put a computer in at home by the other half.

All that, and I'm a manager of an IT team in a large media company!

Bring back the days before mobile phones, when we used to make an arrangement to go out, and all turned up because you couldn't leave someone waiting in town for you with no way of getting in touch. It forced you to not just let people down at the drop of a hat, there is way too much unnecessary communication nowadays...and yes, I do see the irony in posting this on a website!

@jimmythecuckoo is me