Flickr 2 Twitter !

How HOT is Twitter ? I was loathe to using Twitter, for I was getting irritated with the number of social networking sites on the web. I am on orkut. But then, the list is fast becoming endless. Facebook is the other. Twitter too was out of bounds for me, since I did not want to venture into more networking sites and not concentrate on any at all. I seldom go to orkut either these days.

But Twitter, seems different. As a blogger, it does give me a window of opportunity to have more visitors to my blog, and any other publicly shared articles or materials of mine, which of course I believe are worthy of sharing :). Twitter is unique in another way. It is so upto date with any information, that new sites have to be on watch. It is undoubtedly real time information, though in an amateurish, first hand way from any normal netizen. But, it opens up a plethora of information for netizens who sit and browse from distances far away.

Here is an example that often comes to my mind. If I wish to go hiking to a spot, 6 hours away, I would want to make sure the weather conditions over there are reasonably good. This would expecially come of use, when it is in a matter of hours that I want to travel. If there is someone on twitter, tweeting about the weather conditions, I can just go, look it up and make a decision in a matter of minutes and deicide for or against my hiking plan. That, for me is the power of twitter. Short yet 140 sweet, pertinent characters are slowly revolutionizing how the web will collect the hottest news stories around the globe.
Coming back to my selfish motive of having more visitors to my sites, I sent one of my flickr photos to twitter, through delicious. Oh yes, you read it right. This is what I did:

Logged in and accessed my Flickr Photo
Clicked on Bookmark on Delicious button
Authenticated myself on Delicious
On the Delicious page, chose the option of sending to my twitter
Authenticated myself on Twitter.
Lo and behold, the link to my photo was on Twitter, for anyone to access

I guess, once Twitter and Flickr have a tie up, those many steps won't be required :) Oh well, I just googled and did find I needn't have taken so many steps ! There is a service to tie your flickr account with your twitter account. And yes, rather amusingly, after I posted this blog, I see that the name of this service is also called Flickr2Twitter ! So much for coincidences !

Half hour before I accessed my Flickr stats, there were only 3 visitors to my Flickr page today. After I tweeted, it has jumped to 27 ! Now, THAT's the power of Twitter. More tricks to follow soon. I have 200 odd photos on Flickr you see ;)

Hail Hitler! OOPS.. Twitter !! :)