It seems everyone is talking about Twitter lately – What is Twitter? How will Twitter make money? What will happen to Twitter once it goes mainstream? Twitter, Twitter, Twitter… – so I’m going to go ahead and jump on the bandwagon and add my own two cents.

My friend Henriette just wrote a great post on her blog explaining the differences between Facebook and Twitter. Her post got me thinking, because it was only two weeks ago that I attempted to explain to my mom what Twitter was, and I found I had a hard time doing so. I KNEW what Twitter was, but I couldn’t explain it very well, especially to someone who is not as technically inclined.

Henriette nailed it right on the head when she said,

“You can explore people on Facebook. You can explore people on Twitter. But where Facebook is great to find out a lot of stuff about people based on a context, Twitter is great at exploring people based on conversation and interactions.”

A lot of people think Twitter is stupid (ie, my coworkers), and to give them credit, much of the stuff that is posted IS pointless (many of my own tweets included). However, what makes Twitter great isn’t the individual tweets a person makes, but the collective of tweets and the interactions you are able to make with complete strangers (and companies). As I tried explaining to my mom, “It’s like texting, chat rooms, and message boards combined.” Not a very great explanation, but it worked for her.

I also enjoy Twitter because it provides real time media reporting and channels. I knew about the plane crash in the Hudson river and Lance Armstrong’s recent injury hours before my coworkers read it on CNN. At SXSW, I was able to see which parties were the ones to be at, could read comments and questions regarding a particular pane, and was able to interact with other people in line for Diggnation – in real time.

How will Twitter make money? I don’t know. Gary Vaynerchuk posted a great video on his theory, and Jason Calacanis posted an interesting mockup of his idea. I would also imagine Twitter also has massive amounts of data relating to any one subject, and could pull that data and present it in a clean and concise manner to a company that wants to know what people think of their brand (although that company could easily do it themselves with the search feature, but the companies who don’t know how to use Twitter may be willing to pay).

Personally, I love Twitter. I do recognize that what I tweet about – and what many others tweet about – is pointless, but there’s also something beautiful in the simple and mundane part of every day life. I know that no one cares what I ate for breakfast, and saying so will not affect anyone else’s life in any particular way (except possibly others who are also passionate about breakfast burritos!). But at the end of the day, I feel apart of something. The fact that people care enough about what I have to say (no matter how mundane) to follow me is amazing, and makes me feel like I have a voice on this big thing we call the internet.

Follow me on Twitter! :)

While I was at SXSW, I picked up on the idea that branding yourself is important, especially if you are an entrepreneur in any way, shape, or form.

Well, duh.

But the chatter I heard wasn’t so much about why it’s important to brand yourself, but how to do so in the best manner possible. Aside from speaking with and listening to some wonderful people at SXSW on this subject, I’ve also read several articles on why I should be using my real name instead of an online handle (the articles revolve around Twitter, but I believe the idea can be carried across all platforms). The reasoning behind this idea is that as people begin to put more and more information about themselves on the web, it is becoming less and less important to distinguish one’s real self with one’s online self. This struck a chord with me as I found it completely true, which led to my decision to change my online name.

Even so, letting go of peachsoda has been hard. I came up with peachsoda03 when I was in the seventh grade (the 03 stood for the year I graduated high school, because really, when you’re in seventh grade, high school graduation feels like it will never come). I had been struggling for a year or two with choosing an online alias I truly liked, until I came across a website called Applesoda. “That’s clever,” I thought. So I did what any girl in seventh grade would do; I copied the idea and modified it to my liking. Hence, peachsoda03 was born (if I remember correctly, I had to add the 03 because peachsoda had already been taken… damn AOL),. It has been my identity since.

I think the reason I liked peachsoda so much was that there was nothing else like it (that I came across at least, aside from Applesoda which soon went away) and have been told on more than one occasion that my name was cute/clever/memorable/etc. However, I also feel that by retiring peachsoda, I am starting a new, more grown-up chapter in my life, and that is exciting.

So, in celebration of this new chapter, I am introducing www.jenniferwilhelm.com with a brand new design. Please let me know if you find any errors, as I’m not perfect and have most likely become blind to my own mistakes at this point. I’ll also try to post here more regularly… Twitter seems to have taken over my desire to blog, but that’s another post for another day.