Twitter While Backpacking- A Perfect Combination

In the last few years, microblogging has become very popular. One of the most popular ones out there is TWITTER. You may not be very familiar with using twitter but I bet you’ve at least heard about it. So how does it work? You start by creating a twitter account and voila, you are now a twitter user! The whole purpose of using it is to let people know (in 140 characters or less) what you’re up to. You can give your followers an update about yourself or give the latest news in just a few lines.  This being said, you can follow people on twitter and vice versa.

So far, you’re probably wondering why you should consider getting a twitter account if you don’t have one. And honestly, I’m not really a big fan of it but I must admit that it’s ideal when traveling. If you hate writing or replying to emails when traveling, twitter may just be your savior! You can easily use twitter to keep family and friends updated and it will only take one minute of your time (compare to 5 minutes per email)!

The other major advantage of using twitter is to stay in touch with people you meet while backpacking! Twitter allows you to stay updated with their travels (or vice versa) and you can therefore easily meet up with friends you met in South America but this time in Asia!

Another advantage is quickly getting information when traveling. So what if you’re in Cape Town and want to know the best places to eat or visit? You can write it on twitter and next thing you know, you’ll be receiving some recommendations from travelers who have already been there.

Some fun Twitter facts:

• Over 50 millions tweets/day
• In 2007, twitter users were posting 5,000 tweets per day. By 2008, that number increased to 300,000/day to finally reach 2.5 million per day in 2009. That is absolute craziness!