Twitter is an amazing application. I still remember hearing about it in the spring of 2008 as some type of "let others know what you're doing" service. It seemed a little silly to me and I couldn't understand the value. My first tweet is lost for now, but I know that I struggled to find a use for the service at the beginning. Like many people, I ended up updating my status with inane things like "Getting a latte from Starbucks."

Since then I've found Twitter to be a very exciting way of keeping in touch with people around the world, learning new things, and even getting information at various events. It's the ultimate water cooler that makes me smile, laugh, and share interesting information. There is a great SQL Server community on Twitter, and an amazing hashtag (#sqlhelp) that might help you solve some complex SQL issue. It's happened before, and it's amazing when it does, especially considering that responses are limited to 140 characters.

It seems that there are any number of ways in which people use the service to spread information and interact with others. However there are security implications in using Twitter, and that leads me to this week's poll:

Do you want your SQL Servers tweeting?

If you find some way in which it might be useful for your database server to send information out through a broadcast service, would you want to use Twitter? Are you worried about potential security implications, or maybe just the potential load from a large number of broadcasts. Would you ever consider letting your application or database server read twitter updates and respond to them?

If you haven't tried Twitter, I'd recommend you do so. It isn't for everyone, but I've found a lot of value and inspiration from the service.

Steve Jones

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