Twitter & How the “Twittest” Use it for Keeping Up
by: Michael Sauers, Christa Burns, Cindi Trainor, and Jezmynne Westcott

Michael Sauers and Christa Burns
Microblogging
Short, fast, easy, mobile
140 characters or less
follow friends, be followed, like IM, but asynchronous, no status
Need friends to have fun and “get it”
Easy to sign-up and start

Terminology
Post=tweet
Verb= tweeting
Methods: via the web, via client (Twhirl), via bookmarklet, via email, via SMS, Blog-to-witter (twitterfeed)
URLs are shortened to tinyurl

Twhirl: on your desktop, works for Twitter and friendfeed
TwitThis: bookmarklet the URL
Twitterfeed: can run through your RSS feed and it will show up in Twitter

Twitter commands
@username: reply
d username message: private, direct message
nudge username: nudge person
l: location information
follow username
leave username
block username (can’t read your topic)
invite phonenumber
#hashtag (tag)

Direct Messages
Sent directly to you, private instead of public

Add friends: follow button under the person icon on twitter

Follow your friends:
read your friends’ tweets via your twitter homepage, can subscribe via RSS, receive tweets via SMS

Uses:
Conferences
Reference Questions
News
Emergency Services
Weather
Presidential Campaigns, etc.

search.twitter.com : can search twitter (tag for Internet Librarian is IL2008)

Problems
Twitterference–so many tweets that you can’t make a phone call
No back-up, content is gone
considered too distracting
If you don’t participate, you won’t get anything out of it

7 Tips to a Good Twitter Experience
Follow others
@comment others
link to your stuff
don’t take non-responses personally
be patient
avoid addiction
use your name

Cindi Trainor, and Jezmynne Westcott

Twitter can be a learning tool

Making Connections
Sharing your stuff
Putting it all together
Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Twitter Questions:
How do you make connections?
can add people to your favorites

Tweetdeck: see all your tweets and replies in different frames and TwitScoop (tag cloud) to see the buzz, could also use twhirl

FriendFeed is a social aggregator
Aggregate all your social media in one place, enables conversation
Real time data, live updates for you

Flock
Browser made specifically for social media applications
(cool idea, but I don’t like the default skin, I need to customize it)

Take Home Message:
Twitter is great for community and you need community to make it work. But beware because it can be addictive and a great time sink.