Why is Twitter so hard to use?

Because that's what makes it fun. It's easy to post your first few tweets, set up a background image, and start following a few of your peers. Beyond that, it's actually pretty hard to master (at least for me). I've posted 83 tweets since I signed up August, and I still have a lot to learn.

First of all, not unlike the middle school lunch room, there are social norms--"twittiquette"--to adhere to. Here's an article about 14 ways you might accidentally annoy people. It's easy to remember not to post while drunk, but some of the tips, like "plug modestly" are more subtle. I set up an account for my magazine the other day, with the sole goal of roping in new readers. But no one will follow you if you're a robo-flack, so how do you get around that?

The best thing to do is to make your tweets as interesting and useful as possible, which isn't always easy in a 140 character post. That's where this article: "101 Ways to Rock and Be Rocked by Twitter" comes in. It encourages people to start using all of the cool applications that have popped up, like Group Tweet, which lets you add multiple contributers to one account. It also taught me that I made a mistake by starting an account for my magazine under its name, instead of my own.

Trying to get good at Twitter is time-consuming and sometimes frustrating. But even as a newbie, I've already seen a lot of benefits. It's made me one of the first people to know when a major crime happens in my city, and it keeps me up to date on media trends. Plus, it gets me a chance to communicate with reporters and editors who wouldn't have had time to talk to me otherwise.