I have been a user of twitter since the very beginning and I think it is an amazing social site. But you may ask what good does that do me. Can I change the world? Can I make money? Can I learn? Well I can personally answer yes to all those.

Change the world
I had an idea to make a twitter bot called @makechange. A pretty simple idea, you send a direct message to @makechange with ideas to change the world. So I paired up with developer and twitter world changer @nateritter. Who you may have heard of as the person who provided up to the minute coverage of the San Diego fires via Twitter. We talked on IM for 10 minutes and he coded the bot for me. He wrote a great post and drew some napkins sketches that visualize my idea. The code for the bot is also provided. Now this may not cure world hunger or solve global warning, but it’s something and it creates community around the idea using twitter.

Make money
Done, I have been scouting freelance work via Twitter. I sat in on a talk about doing getting freelance work and I have finally started making an effort to seek out work and not only have it come to me. You would be amazed how many people ask “Anyone know a designer / developer / insert talent” on twitter. Also I have hooked up with some people that seem to always know somebody needing work done.

Learn more
I still use my feed reader on a daily basis but Twitter has become a human filtered source of great knowledge. I follow people from all different fields of work and knowledge and I’m turned on to interesting stuff everyday. So you might ask, what do I really learn that I can apply to work. I have a large developing network for people in my field in twitter when I have a questions I simply pose the question and answers pour in. It’s quick it’s simple. As I mentioned when I was quoted in the newspaper the other day, “I like that I can follow and get in the mind of people that inspire me”. I follow people that are some of the top minds in the web and other fields. I get their day in day out thought stream, things they wouldn’t write blog posts about but I get this knowledge via twitter.

Check out the Twitter Life Cycle