4 Reasons You Should Use Twitter

I remember back when I spent all my time coding - thinking that I could never find enough time to be active in any online forums. While I still feel that as a coder you should be more focused on development, I definitely think there is a place for maintaining a presence on social networks and twitter in particular.

• Expose yourself to great thinkers. There are all types on twitter - markers and social media types, but also everything else from hackers to artists and beyond. You can find yourself a great little community of developers. And among them you may be surprised to find many of the thought leaders in the development world. You can get an inside peak at their brain on a daily basis. You can see how they are thinking and see what tools and methodologies they’re using.
• Get answers to questions. From time to time when you run into that gnarly bug in your code or some strange limitation of whatever platform you’re coding on, you may want to reach out and ask for some quick help. Forums are great for this but you can’t expect a very prompt response. In twitter, if someone following you has the answer you will find out in about 20 seconds
• Potential job leads. Get yourself out there and get to know others in your industry, network a bit. You never know when you will need your next job and it helps to be in touch with others. You may find yourself offering help when people ask and that could put you in a very good light - they will think of you next time they are hiring.
• It’s fast! You don’t need to write a whole book just to seem like you have something intelligent to offer to the conversation. In fact its just the opposite - a premium is placed on brevity!

So jump onto twitter, and start building a community so you can experience some of these benefits for yourself!

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