Twitter: A Final Friday presentation

Twitter
What’s happening –
in 140 characters or less
Donna Berryman – Miner Library – January 2010

http://twitter.com

Email:
Email can be sent to one specific person - if you know their address
TO:
Subject:
__________________
_________
_________
Or you can send an exact duplicate of the message to a whole bunch of people on an email list (provided you have their correct addresses)

Email:
Email can be sent to one specific person - if you know their address
TO:
Subject:
__________________
_________
_________
Or you can send an exact duplicate of the message to a whole bunch of people on an email list (provided you have their correct addresses)
Text:
How R U?
Texts are sent from one phone to another – if you have the number

Type one message, once, and it goes
You don’t need to know an email address or a phone number

What is Twitter?
A free, web-based social networking service
Community of:
People you follow
People who follow you
Tweets
140 characters
What’s happening?
What are you doing?

What is Twitter?
River – Everyone knows the location of the river. Sometimes, you choose to go fish there. Sometimes, you don’t. But the information river is there….
[See Richard Dale’s presentation on this at http://bit.ly/8ZIiOR]

What is Twitter?
Cocktail party – You’ve invited a lot of your friends to a big party. You wander among them, listening in here, chatting there.
[See John Reid’s post at http://bit.ly/lW5n7]

What is Twitter?
Cocktail party – You’ve invited a lot of your friends to a big party. You wander among them, listening in here, chatting there.
[See John Reid’s post at http://bit.ly/lW5n7]
Twitter is a Conversation

Conversation
Twitter = the service
Tweeple = a cutesy way of saying “people”
Twitterverse = all the people using Twitter
Tweets, retweets, tinyurls, hastags, @, DM

Tweet:

Tweet:
Icon or photo this user chose to use with their account

Tweet:
User name for the author of this tweet

Tweet:
Message

Retweet
A retweet occurs when one author repeats a tweet written by someone else.

Retweet
When that happens, you’ll see RT in the tweet.

Retweet
When that happens, you’ll see RT in the tweet.
Following the RT will be the copied message. The @ sign gives the name of the original author.

Retweet
Why retweet? Twitter is a community of communities. You follow certain people. The people who follow you, however, follow others, also. Retweeting a message sends it to many other communities.
If you post something of interest to a lot of people, you may be surprised to see it retweeted and retweeted.

# (Hashtag)
People often tweet about conferences or classes or events they are attending. This allows people who are not in attendance the opportunity to know some of what’s happening at the event.
Or they are tweeting about a certain subject.

# (Hashtag)
This tweet includes a # followed by several characters. It’s called a hashtag.
A hashtag (#) identifies this tweet with a certain subject or event.
The hashtag also allows people to search & easily find all the tweets on a certain subject or from a certain event.

# (Hashtag)
In this case, #engage365 was the hashtag chosen to identify tweets about a webinar on social media presented by Engage365.
People can search Twitter for #engage365 and see all the tweets that attendees wrote about the webinar.

# (Hashtag)
Some famous hashtags:
#FF = Follow Friday. When you see this hashtag in a tweet, it is generally followed by names. The author of the tweet is recommending these people as interesting tweeters and thinks you might want to follow them, too. (This hashtag is usually only used on Fridays, as the name implies)
#SOTU = State of the Union. People used this to identify tweets about President Obama’s speech on 1/27/2010.

Tiny URL:

Tiny URL:
Twitter is also used to notify everyone about a new paper or blog posting or news article that may be of interest. That’s what’s happening here.

Tiny URL:
But, Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters. The web address for this news item is: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/01/stillbirth_tied_to_gum_disease.html?ft=1
That’s too many characters. So here, a URL shortening service has been used (this one was http://bit.ly). Now the URL has fewer characters.
By shortening the URL, the author can post a message AND the location of this news item.

@
@ = reply
Here, eagledawg is replying to something BerrymanD tweeted
The @ is sometimes called a mention.

@
While this reply is in response to something posted by BerrymanD,
it is not a private message.
Others can see it.
You will often see the @ in the tweets of the people you follow, even if they are not replying to you.

Remember this:

Remember this:
There’s also this:
A single person

Direct Messages (DM)
Direct messages are private messages shared between twitter users.
These are NOT public.
In order to send a DM, both parties must be following each other.

So, let’s get started!
Sign up at http://twitter.com

Profiles
Complete your profile!

Profiles
This is important – it tells people a bit about you. It helps people decide whether or not you’re someone they might want to follow. Yes, it’s public information.

Profiles
Upload a photo or icon

Profiles
Find people or organizations to follow

Profiles
You can let Twitter access your email accounts & look for people who have already signed up. Do this if you wish.
You can look for people you already know who tweet
You can browse through categories of tweeters on Twitter
You can browse tweets on the public twitter timeline

Profiles
So, who tweets?
Most major news outlets: New York Times, CNN, the Democrat & Chronicle, NPR etc.
Most media outlets & many corporations
Celebrities & non-celebrities
Physicians, educators, athletes….. The list is endless

Profiles
And TWEET!
Join the conversation.
You can start by following me, if you wish.
Or maybe you’d like to follow………?

What if I don’t want to sign up? What then?
You can still use Twitter – just in different ways:
View the public Twitter timeline – just see what’s being tweeted across the entire world
http://twitter.com/public_timeline

View the public Twitter timeline
Watch trending topics: you can see these on the Twitter homepage, under the search box

View the public Twitter timeline
Watch trending topics
Search Twitter for topics of interest – just go to the Twitter home page, enter a topic and see what people are tweeting about it.

Resources
A list of links about Twitter:
http://delicious.com/berry025/Twitter
Social Media University – Global (SMUG):
Useful guidelines and info for using social media
From the Mayo Clinic
http://social-media-university-global.org/

Have questions? Need help? Contact a librarian!

Twitter: A Final Friday presentation

by Miner Library, University of Rochester Medical Center on Jan 29, 2010

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