Tune-Up #9: Twitter

DEFINE
According to the Twitter FAQ, “Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you’re doing.” That doesn’t really tell us very much. Wikipedia has a more complete description: “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates via SMS, instant messaging, email, to the Twitter website, or any one of the multitude of Twitter applications now available”.

Twitter asks the question, “What are you doing?” and allows you to send a small update (limited to just 140 characters) to your followers. The concept is amazingly simple and that is perhaps one of the main reasons why it has caught on like wildfire.

The restriction to 140 characters has resulted in Twitter being labeled “micro blogging”. A traditional blog is a log of what somebody is up to, but in a richer, more detailed format. One of the key benefits of Twitter is that you can send and receive updates (also called tweets) by browser, email or instant messaging so you can keep in touch no matter where you are.

DISCOVER
If you open an Internet browser and navigate to twitter.com, you will see a list of popular topics. Clicking on these will give you a sample of what tweet messages are like, and the wide variety of subjects that can be covered. Once you register with twitter.com, you can send your own messages and respond to other tweets.

Here are a couple of common questions posed by new "tweeters":

How do you find Twitter users in your area of interest? It's actually quite easy. You just have to get a little creative with the Twitter Search Engine. Simply enter some keywords related to your interests, focusing especially on current hot topics or trends. The search engine will bring back all recent tweets containing those terms; then all you need to do is read each tweet. If it looks relevant, click on the user profile to see what other things that user tweets about.

How do you get people to follow your twitter messages? There are lots of ways. First of all if you have a web presence such as a website or blog, make sure you advertise your Twitter profile prominently. This can be as simple as a text link. If you don’t have a web presence, you can insert your link into email or forum signatures. Another way to pick up a few followers is to follow other people in your chosen area of interest. Some people follow anyone who follows them!

Can Twitter be used privately between two people? Yes it can, but an instant messaging tool is much better. In order to send a private tweet to somebody you must use the following format:
‘d username message.’ There is one additional requirement– both parties must be following each other.

How do you upload pictures to Twitter? You cannot directly embed an image into a tweet as it is a text-only format but there is a service called TwitPic that allows you to easily insert image URL’s into twitter. Many Twitter clients now have in-built support for TwitPic.

Do
- Sign up for a new Twitter account (or sign into your existing one).
- Look for Library related tweets and find your colleagues.
- Experiment with the endless options in Twitter and write about them on your blog.
- Have fun!

For extra credit, try the final Tune-Up: Social Networking with de.licio.us