We all love to twitter (From Basingstoke Gazette)

We all love to twitter

12:10pm Thursday 16th April 2009

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BARACK Obama does it. Stephen Fry does it. And now more and more people in Basingstoke are doing it.

The latest phenomenon sweeping across the internet is Twitter – a free social network tool which people use to post messages online about what they are doing.

The craze is said to have tens of millions of users, including celebrities who use “tweets” to keep their followers updated on their activities.

Last Thursday, the first Basingstoke “Tweet-up” – or Twitter meet up – was held at the Red Lion Hotel, in London Street.

Among the 12 attendees were people with Twitter usernames such as freshplastic, surferbill and sheddriver – some of whom were actually tweeting about the event via their mobile phones and laptops as it was happening.

Web developer Gary Jones, 29, organised the event by searching for the top 50 Twitter users in Basingstoke. He then invited them along and made name badges for everyone.

Mr Jones, of Pemerton Road, whose username is GaryJ, said: “It all started when I noticed that there seemed to be quite a few people from Basingstoke on Twitter, so I sent a message saying ‘what do people think of a get together?’.

“The response was really good, and it’s a great way to meet new people. I like to keep updated with what people in Basingstoke are doing, not celebrities, because their news is not relevant to me.

“With the success of the Tweetup, we hope to make it a monthly event.”

People from different walks of life attended the get together, including a salon owner, an environmental journalist and a digital agency managing director. Surferbill – real name Terry Douglas – even had a T-shirt made especially for the event.

Among the Twitter fans was Jamie Ogbuigwe, of Essex Road – a 26-year-old quality health, safety and environment journalist. Miss Ogbuigwe, whose username is interact4future, said: “I work with words and what I like about Twitter is the fact that you only have a small amount of characters to express yourself.

“I’ve lived in Basingstoke for a year and have met absolutely no-one. This get-together is a great way of finding some new friends.”

Jason Kneen, whose username is jkneen, had the most online followers in the group, with 826.

The 38-year-old, from Shipton Bellinger, said: “I’m tweeting about this as we speak. It’s very exciting. Last week I had a meeting with former England rugby captain Will Carling in a coffee shop after meeting him through Twitter.”

The next event is planned for May 14. For more information, visit bsktweetup.info or follow@bsktweetup on Twitter.

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