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. Their Twitter thread is here.
Discovery Exercise:
- Visit Twitter and sign up for a free account. Try a few tweets.
- 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 can libraries use Twitter? How could you use Twitter?
Re: Twitter…read all about it, signed up for account…and then found out only one friend in my address book has it…seems like it is just more “stuff” to manage, more messages to read…more “noise” to my overly busy day…even my kids (24, 23, and 16) are not using it…yet, anyways…
Not sure how this will be useful to me or to the library. Looked at some library uses; sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s a website and what’s a blog. But it’s good to know what it is. Take care, all–Happy MLK jr Day!