I love Twitter because although it can definitely become a time suck, it has also led me to discover so many interesting people, events, articles, websites and ideas. I have total geek love for film but I am also interested in lots of other things and Twitter allows me to indulge in all my random passions from social change, to entrepreneurship and technology in Africa, to open source solutions, to mobile health, to progressive and environmental business practices, to feminism… and on and on (you can see how useful this can be when you are researching a documentary or a script and delving into worlds unfamiliar to you). It has opened up a whole world of access and possibility for me and I love it for that.

It can also be a great way for you to promote your films and career (along with Shooting People of course!). Follow us on Twitter and please post comments or reply to us on Twitter if you have any really great Twitter tips for independent filmmakers.

You can follow @shootingpeople and my more personal feed: @fromthehip

Ted Hope’s new blog Truly Free Film is definitely one to add to your reader (if you haven’t started subscribing to blog feeds in a reader I highly recommend it – it saves time and allows you to keep track of loads of blogs and websites in one place. I use Google Reader but there are other options out there). I previously wrote about Hope’s Phoenix Rising speech here and his Truly Free Film blog follows on from this with excellent tips for filmmakers. One of his posts talks about what a bunch of luddites filmmakers can be and I have to say that I have found this to be mostly true and it’s a shame because there are some incredible tools out there for us to use now. Shooting People is celebrating its 10th birthday this week and in the last decade we have seen some monumental changes in terms of technology and innovation. It’s hard for filmmakers now because the competition is so fierce (and the budgets are often so low) but the ability that we now have to connect and collaborate with each other and our audiences is unprecedented.

In one of his posts, Hope linked to this excellent resource on social media by Beth Kanter (check out her blog on how nonprofits can use social media). I follow her on Twitter because her observations are often very relevant for filmmakers too. Twitter has become a useful tool for finding out about exciting things happening in the world of Web2.0, social media and technology – and I have been introduced to lots of great people and ideas through it. It is definitely worth investigating although it can also be something of a time-suck. You have been warned.

If you need a little help sorting out your RSS feeds from your Wikis then check out the videos on The CommonCraft Show. Lee LeFever explains the basics in a wonderfully clear way and will get you started with some suggested links to try out. Topics include:

Twitter
Social Networking
Social Bookmarking
Blogs
Wikis
RSS

Is anyone using Twitter actively? Do you find it useful? Do you find out about cool stuff through Twitter? Or is it just more noise, less signal?

Personally I’m a little addicted but I’m not sure if it’s a good, productive addiction or a bad, waste-of-time, distracting addiction. It’s a little like being at a big dinner party and trying to have lots of different conversations at the same time and never quite getting to the point.