Have you heard people talking about Twitter? Wonder what a “tweet” is? Well, get ready for some fun! First, watch this CreativeCommons video:
Twitter allows users to post 140-character updates, answering the question: “What are you doing?” These posts are shared via the web to either the world or to the users’ friends. Fred Stutzman, in his “12-Minute Definitive Guide,” describes Twitter this way:
Call it a microblog, a social presence tool, or whatever else you’d like–it does appear that Twitter is here to stay. As a tool with many flexible uses, it is likely that we’ll see individuals integrating Twitter with all sorts of interesting applications in the future. It is this simplicity and flexibility that makes Twitter a winner–in 140 characters or less.
Users can access Twitter messages—called “Tweets”—via the Web, via an RSS feed, and via text on their cellular phones or any number of third part apps. Stutzman divides uses into two areas: social updating and microblogging. Accessing a Twitter user, one might find an update on his or her day, a direct message to another Twitterer, or a bit of wit and wisdom. Libraries are using Twitter as well as a means to update content on the Web or for alert services.
Discovery Resources:
- All a Twitter: Want to Try Microblogging? Elyssa Kroski’s recent article in School Library Journal.
- Learn More: Twitter from Steve Campion
- ArsTechnica on Twitter
- Seven Tips for New Twitter Users
- Youth Twitter is a Twitter-like school-based site for students
- Twitter Search for CML
Discovery Exercise:
- Visit Twitter and sign up for a free account. Try a few tweets.
- Visit the Learn & Play @CML account and “follow” it. Do you see other CML staff members that “learnandplay” is following?
- Search Twitter for anything that interests you to explore how people use this tool. What conversations did you find?
- Blog about the experience and be sure to post your Twitter username there so others can see it and follow you. Did you like micro-blogging? How else could libraries use Twitter? How could you use Twitter?
[...] September 8, 2008 Filed under: Uncategorized — whetstonebranch @ 7:43 pm In Thing #12 you’ll learn to use Twitter. I just started using it myself last week, and I am hooked! Take [...]
How do I sign up to be a ‘follower’? I’m afraid I’m just completely lost with this.
Library Joy turned me on to TwitterFox — an awesome Firefox extension. I highly recommend it!
I can’t figure out how to get a twitter comment to go to Learn&Play@cml twitter account. I set up my twitter account, figured out how to Follow the learn&play@cml twitter, but not how to post to it. Help someone!
Glad to help! When you want a tweet to go to a specific person, you have to add ‘@’ in front of their name.
A tweet just to Learn and Play would look like this:
@learnandplay I’m enjoying learning about twitter.
you and also send a direct message to a person by putting a ‘d(space)username’ That would look like this:
d learnandplay I’m enjoying learning about twitter
additional twitter commands can be found on the FAQ page.
http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=75
I think I’d much rather get CML updates of a NON-BRANCH SPECIFIC nature through Twitter than through e-mail. What do you guys think? I just get tired of deleting e-mails all the time…
[...] 10, 2008 by gerald2.0 Twitter is thing #12 and is a way to “microblog” about what you’re doing ”right now.” [...]
[...] 13, 2008 Now a month behind, we come to Thing 12: [...]
[...] I agree with Chris that some of us need a support group for Twitter!
And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, come see what all the fuss is! [...]
[...] from Learn & Play. Check out her post about how much she loves it. She’s also enjoying Twitter, and posts as queenknitalot. And don’t forget, she is also available to help others who have [...]