Welcome to the second instalment of my exploration into Twitter. 

First up, I log onto to the website www.twitter.com and get an account.

This is as easy as any online sign up could be. What’s more, since Twitter is still quite young I get to use my actual name as a user name – geoffstevenson. That is a bonus. Good so far.

I also rather enjoy the site aesthetics – you can choose a design for your feed home page and they’re all pretty easy on the eye. I add my own picture.

I’m now a Twitter user and I’m offered some “well known” Twitter feeds to follow to start me off. I choose the no. 10 Downing Street feed. So far I’ve learnt that the guy who writes it is called Ian.

What next? I need some more people to follow. I must feed on their tweets. I go to facebook and see that a friend from my undergrad days uses Twitter, so I add his feed. He is an interesting person and will probably have some interesting things to say. “Fish and chips” he says in a tweet.

But who else to follow? I’m a bit stuck, and will have to do some digging around to find something. I obviously move in the wrong circles.

But enough of who to follow, what shall I say? No one is listening, so it doesn’t really matter. I break the ice with something banal:

“I begin the Twitter Trials. Follow my progress on www.40three.wordpress.com”

It feels a bit like speaking out loud to an empty room.