Twitter anyone?

[Kathryn Gould]

Folks out there on twitter-- have you had success using it as a networking tool? Who should I follow? What are hashtags about? I'm not finding it terribly easy to use, any suggestions?

Oh, and if you follow me, I'll follow you!

K

[Nelson Goforth]

I follow a few cinematographers, directors, and suchlike, but have not put any effort into using Twitter for promotion or networking.

Self-obsessed celebrities can post their bodily functions and have a huge following, but the best users seem to be those who post pithy observations, interesting links to things they've seen, or wit.  Mark Romanek (22,000+ followers) and Vincent Laforet (37,500) sometimes post links to short films they like, and camera reviews in Laforet's case, but more often just promote their own work or appearances, post guy Stu Maschwitz (16,500) and Red post guru Graeme Nattress (3,000) have a lot of interesting techy information that I tend to read.  Otherwise Twitter has yet to grab me.

Except.  The absolute best thing I've seen on Twitter is "Real Time World War II" (200,000) - the Second World War as it happens, as if it were this date in 1940.  Right now the Finns and the Russians are engaged in their own war, the Germans are poised to invade Belgium, and Auschwitz has just been established. https://twitter.com/#!/RealTimeWWII

Hashtags: using a hashtag in a tweet causes Twitter to recognize it and show that post when other people search on the hashtag.  For instance, when the film festival was running I created a couple of tweets and included their hashtag sdff34 (preceded by # symbol).  Anyone who was following that hashtag would see my post about Web of Lies in amongst the other festival posts.