Quick Summary: In Mumbai? On Twitter? Register for the first Mumbai Twitter Meetup. Not on Twitter? Find seven reasons why you should sign up for Twitter today.

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If You Are in Mumbai & on Twitter, Attend the Mumbai Twitter Meetup

Yesterday, when I tweeted about wanting to do a Mumbai Twitter Meetup —

Blog meets are so passe. I want to do a Mumbai Twitter meet. Anyone interested? (Twitter)

– I received half a dozen responses within seconds.

Within the hour, I had set up a @MumbaiTwit Twitter account, a dozen public had started following it, Aalaap Ghag (@aalaap) and Kapil Bhatia (@kapilb) had posted about the event and Aalaap had set up a Mumbai Twitter Meetup event on Facebook. Phew!

So, whether you are in Mumbai and on Twitter, let’s meet up for the first Mumbai Twitter Meetup.

When? 5 pm, Saturday, December 29, 2007.

Where? Flat No A/65, Sea Lord, Cuffe Parade, Mumbai.

If you are planning to attend, here are a few things you should do in the run up to the event –

- Register for the event by following @MumbaiTwit on Twitter, joining the Mumbai Twitter Meetup event on Facebook, or leaving a comment below. Better still, do all three!

- Promote the event by tweeting about the event, or posting about it, or displaying the event poster or the event logo on your blog. Do remember to include a link to @MumbaiTwit on Twitter and the Mumbai Twitter Meetup event on Facebook in your post.

- Evangelize Twitter and get five interesting public — and I mean really interesting citizens — who aren’t yet on Twitter to sign-up for Twitter, next invite them for the event. whether you want, use that post to explain to them what Twitter is and why they should sign up for it.

- Tweet your ideas for cool things to do for the event. I’ll gather them and put them up for voting. The best notion will get a surprize. Do remember to include a @MumbaiTwit in your tweets for me to track them.

For the event itself, here are a few thoughts to start you off –

- The venue of the event is my house. whether more than 30 humans sign up for the event, we’ll put our heads together and tweet up a new public venue. that, however, looks unlikely, as of now.

- The event is totally free. I’ll arrange for snacks, beer and wine and we can order pizza for dinner. You don’t need to pay anything, or bring anything, but I’ll not say no to a nice bottle of wine.

- I only have jazz, classic rock and ghazals on my iPod. whether you want to listen to something else, bring your own iPod. whether abundant humans being their iPods, we can take turns at playing music and even do an impromptu contest and give a surprize for the ‘Best iJ’.

- Wear all blue. Twitter is blue and my living room curtains/ cushions/ rugs are plus blue. All of us in blue against my blue curtains will construct for an interesting group photo op. We can even have a surprize for the person whose blue clothes are closest shade to the Twitter blue.

- whether one of you can arrange for a projector, we can tweet during the event from our mobile phones and project the tweet-stream on a wall. Once again, we can have a surprize for the best tweet during the event.

So, what are you waiting for? Go register now.

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If You Aren’t Already on Twitter, Sign Up For Twitter Today

If you aren’t yet on Twitter, you probably don’t know what Twitter is (otherwise, you would have been on Twitter). It’s difficult to explain Twitter to someone who hasn’t used it first hand, but I’ll explain it by drawing analogies with seven other services you might have used. soon after, I’ll give you seven reasons to try it out today.

Seven Analogies to Describe What Twitter Is

- #1 Twitter is Like a Blog: The most obvious comparison, of course, is with blogging (in fact, Twitter is basically a micro-blogging platform). Think of Twitter as a blog in which your posts can only be upto 140 letters enlarged. Like blogs (Technorati), Twitter has its own hierarchies, and top 100 lists, (Twitterholic and Tweetboard). What’s

more, like blogs (Google Blog Search), Twitter plus has its own search engine (TweetScan).

- #2 Twitter is Like a Social Network: whether you haven’t ever blogged, you have probably used a social networking site. whether you like Orkut — and who in India doesn’t — think of Twitter as your scrapbook, only better, considering it not only shows what your friends are saying to you and you to them, it additionally shows what they are saying to each others and to total strangers. whether you like Facebook, think of Twitter as your news feed, only better, considering it not only shows what your friends are doing, it additionally allows you to tag them using @username and have conversations with them.

- #3 Twitter is Like a Chat Room:whether you haven’t used either blogs or social networks, you would probably have used a chat room. whether you like chatting, Twitter is perfect for you, considering Twitter becomes like a chat room when you have a few hundred friends who are additionally friends with each other.

- #4 Twitter is Like a Feed Reader: whether you are obsessive about staying on top of news and read hundreds of feeds on your feed reader, you’ll love Twitter considering news and blog posts get shared on Twitter faster than anywhere else.

- #5 Twitter is Like a Forum: whether you have a few hundred friends, Twitter becomes a forum for topics related to technology, marketing and social media. whether you have a problem, or, whether you need some advise, you send our a tweet, and a few dozen citizens would reply to you immediately.

- #6 Twitter is Like a Search Engine: considering Twitter works so well as a forum for topics like technology, marketing and social media, some humans even use it as a people powered search engine. And, trust me, for some terms, Twitter nearly works as efficiently as Google.

- #7 Twitter is like a SMS Service: Finally, even whether you aren’t the online sort of person, you are probably as much into SMSing as everyone else. Twitter works brilliantly well on mobile phones and you can send and receive updates from your mobile phone, either through WAP or through SMS.

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Seven Reasons You Should Sign Up For Twitter Today whether You Already Haven’t

Now that I have explained what Twitter is, here are the seven reasons you should join Twitter today, whether you already haven’t –

Reason #1: Twitter is many things in one — it is a blog, a social network, a chat room, a feed reader, a forum, a people-powered search engine and an SMS service all at once. What more can you ask for?

Reason #2: As influential early adopters are spending more moment on Twitter, conversations are increasingly shifting to Twitter, particularly conversations about web 2.0, technology and marketing.

Reason #3: Twitter is a great place to promote ideas amongst these early adopters. Although I have never actively promoted my blog on Twitter, more than 10% of my traffic comes from Twitter.

Reason #4: Twitter is a great place to build new connections, and not only with citizens who are on Twitter. Yesterday, a Twitter friend in the US introduced me by e-mail to a blogger-marketer in India who isn’t even on Twitter.

Reason #5: Twitter allows you to decide whether you want your updates to be public or private. So, you can use it as a public document or as a private diary.

Reason #6: Twitter works brilliantly as a scrapbook for developing a thought thread. I do it so often that I have started a separate category on my blog for Twitter Threads.

Reason #7: The most urgent reason for joining Twitter is plus the one reason for not joining Twitter — it is very very addictive. But when has that stopped us from doing anything?

So, what are you waiting for? whether you aren’t already on Twitter, go sign up Twitter, thereupon start following me @Gauravonomics and register for the Mumbai Twitter Meet by following @MumbaiTwit. thereupon come to the event, manufacture a bunch of new friends, and get dozens of followers.

End of post/ pitch. I’ll see you on Twitter.

Events, Facebook, Mumbai Twitter Meetup, Noteworthy, Orkut, Social Networks, Tweetup, Twitter Threads, Web 2.0

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Orginal post by Gaurav