User Guides
 Getting Started
help page
YouTube Training Video I and Training Video II
Wikipedia: Twitter
Social network and "microblogging" started in 2006
Identified as the third most used social network service
Terms
Tweet: to send a message
Follow: receive a message each time the person updates
You can control if and how you receive messages from everyone or from specific people
You can set to mobile phone if you wish
"Microblogging": because you are limited to 140 characters
Hashtag (#): designate messages that are related, such as an event, a group of people; it is a way to create groupings
Before using, search to see if someone else is using it
You can search for popular hashtags or the meaning of specific hashtags at http://thebounder.co.uk/tagref/, http://tagal.us and http://whatthetrend.com
An article on How to use Hashtags
Sites such as hashtags.org provides real time monitoring of topics
@ messages: a link to that twitter home page
Retweet: reposting a tweet while giving credit to the original tweeter
DM: a direct message to a specific user; that user must be following your tweets
Tweetup: create an event (see, for example, http://twtvite.com.
Fail Whale: Twitter experiences an outage
If you receive spam, send a message to @spam
Reasons
meet people
learn about interesting people
find people: by name, by email or by brand
find people on other networks
check out the "suggested users" tab (by topic)
UMSL on Twitter
UMSL
Libraries
Athletics
Student Life
College of Business Administration
Continuing Education
Non-Profit Program
Optometry
Public Policy Program
Bookstore
Golf
Notable Uses
The 2008 Presidential election
The 2009 Republican ethics lapse: the Republican Party in Connecticut set up fake Twitter accounts in the names of 33 Democratic members of the state legislature and sent out messages
Arrest of Daniel Knight Hayden who sent out tweets about violence at a teabag protest in Oklahoma
2007 California fires: those using Twitter kept their followers (who were often friends and neighbors) informed of their whereabouts and of the location of various fires minute by minute
2008 Mumbai attacks: eyewitness accounts; list of dead and injured; vital information such as emergency phone numbers and the location of hospitals needing blood donations
February 2009 Victoria bushfires in Australia: used to send out alerts
2009 health departments: H1N1 alerts
2009 Iranian Elections: rallying tool and way of communicating with outside world
2009 Brazilian Supreme Federal Court: posts daily planner of the ministers and important decisions
2010 Resignation by Sun's CEO: Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more
Gangs using Facebook, Twitter more often
UK criminal who taunted police arrested
How to shorten a message
use characters instead of words:
"+" instead of "and"
"2" instead of two, too or to
avoid punctuation
use abbreviations
Need help? Helpful sites make suggestions on how to shorten message
Using links? There are services which help you shorten the links
bit.ly -- shortens links to share; user can track views
is.gd -- shortens links to share; no tracking ability
twi.bz -- shortens links to share; allows some domain information in new URL
Searches can be done at http://search.twitter.com
quotes around phrases for "and"
to avoid a term use "-"
for either of terms, use "or"
Advanced search is available at http://search.twitter.com/advanced
Tracking trends:
http://whatthetrend.com
http://twitscoop.com
http://twopular.com (for a specific time period)
follow @tweetingtrends
Whom Should you Follow
http://mrtweet.net recommendations based on your specific activity
http://whoshouldifollow.com recommendations based on your specific activity
http://wefollow.com
http://twellow.com
http://trackingtwitter.com -- listing of the top media, entertainment, and consumer product feeds
http://twibs.com -- businesses on twitter
http://exectweets.com -- business executives who tweet
http://yammer.com -- people in your organization
http://presentlyapp.com -- enterprise collaboration
Why Tweet?
Drive people to your blog or webpage by providing context for it
Publish a short story, article or a book by posting one line each day
@Genny_Spencer: diary of an Illinois farm girl
Fundraising campaigns for not for profit organizations (e.g., Haiti)
Boost your professional reputation
Of course that means you must post interesting material that is well written and must post regularly on a specific topic
Is this technology sustainable? Check out Gartner's Hype Cycle
They say:
| Microblogging. Microblogging, in general, and Twitter, in particular, have exploded in popularity during 2009 to the extent that the inevitable disillusionment around "channel pollution" is beginning. As microblogging becomes a standard feature in enterprise social software platforms, it is earning its place alongside other channels (for example, e-mail, blogging and wikis), enabling new kinds of fast, witty, easy-to-assimilate exchanges. |
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