Presenters

Barack Obama does it, Stephen Fry does it and Britney Spears does it too. Twitter is the latest Web 2.0 tool to get everybody talking - and people and programmes all over the BBC are at it as well.

For the uninitiated, Twitter is a very simple idea.

You answer the question 'what are you doing?' in 140 letters or less, as often as you like. Other people can then sign up to 'follow' you and receive your updates.

They can also reply to you, either in public by using their own update or in private via a direct message, a bit like an email.

Generally people use it to gossip, gather information and share news - from the mundane (at the time of writing robunderwoodl8 is concerned about his tennis swing) to the significant (director of Global News Richard Sambrook looked to Twitter for UGC updates during the Mumbai attacks).

Behind the scenes

There are several people at BBC Nottingham 'tweeting'.

The BBC Radio Nottingham sports team love to 'tweet'. For the inside track on all things football as well as the team's choice of confectionery...

Rob Underwood presents the Late Show on BBC Radio Nottingham. Find out what questions he'll be asking on the show, what he's been up to out of hours and his current coffee consumption...

While Frances Finn tells us what is coming up on her show as well as spilling the beans on her guests and her producer's food intake...

For all the latest Nottinghamshire news and entertainment stories...

While all the gossip from behind the scenes with Dean, Emma and the Beat team...

More about Twitter

Signing up to Twitter is free.

Once signed up, you can choose to "follow" (i.e. see updates from) as many other Twitter users as you like.

You can access Twitter from the web or via your mobile phone. Costs of accessing via phone will vary depending on your mobile tariff.

Twitter isn't the only microblogging service (though it's by far the most popular). Others include Plurk, Jaiku and identi.ca