We’ll throw our hands up. We just didn’t get it. Until now, Twitter has been largely regarded in the PC Pro office as Facebook status updates, without the rest of Facebook.  Or as Charlie Brooker put it in The Guardian this week: “a monumentally pointless ‘social networking’ thingamajig that lets you type 140-word ponderings or questions to an audience of other timewasters.”

But a few things have helped sway our opinion on this seemingly unstoppable internet phenomenon. First, our sister site IT Pro’s excellent guide to Twitter for business, which opened our eyes to some of the advantages Twitter has over Facebook, not least it’s potential reach.

As one of my colleagues noted when we were talking about this yesterday, Twitter is, if nothing else, an almost unrivalled internet broadcasting platform. Barack Obama (or more likely his flunkies) can post a tweet about his latest initiative, and a quarter of a million people will be instantly updated. Stephen Fry can get trapped in a lift and hundreds of people are sending him suggestions of how to pass the time.

Twitter’s also become a breaking news service. From planes doing a belly flop on to the Hudson River to snow falling in Scarborough, the first many people learn of the latest news events is a Twitter update. I learn from none-other than Guardian columnist and PC Pro contributor Jack Schofield’s tweet today that Twitter is now in the UK’s top 100 most popular sites, for example.

So, we’re going to give it a go. We’ve set up our own Twitter account and will do our best to keep you updated on all things Pro. But if we’re (perhaps recklessly) honest, we’re not quite sure what to do with our Twitter account.

Do you want alerts on the latest breaking news stories on PC Pro, or does our RSS feed and website already fulfil that need? Do you want to know what’s happening in the PC Pro office? Do you want a reminder when the magazine’s coming out?

Let us know on comments below. Hell, tweet us your thoughts.  We may have been dragged kicking and screaming on to Twitter, but now we’re here, we’re going to give it a proper crack.  

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