Participation Literacy
Week#5 Twitter, the Agora, and Futurism
last update: April 6, 2009
Trebor Scholz | @trebors

week 2
Conversation:
Overview, Getting Started Democracy and Blogging
week 1 Conversation:
week 3
Privacy and Social Networking
Attention Overload:
Search, Filter, Content Aggregation
week 4 week 5
Twitter and the 100th Anniversary
of the Futurist Manifesto
week 6
Collaboration:
week 7 Spring Break
Wikis, Wikipedia, Mashups Collaboration:
Collaborative Writing
week 8
Collaboration:
week 9
Social Mapping
Sharing
Cooperation: Media Sharing
week 10
Sharing
week 11
Referral, Tagging, Folksonomies Sharing
Piracy and File Sharing
week 12
week 13 Sharing
week 14 Copyright and Virtual Worlds
Social Bookmarking
Social Music Sites
week 15
Social Cataloging Sites
Trebor Scholz | The New School University | LCST 3073 A | Spring 2009

Collective Action:
Flash Mobs, Activism, and Twitter
week 5
Feb 24, 26
Required Reading:
Huberman, Bernardo, Daniel Romero, and Fang Wu. \"Social networks that matter: Twitter under the
microscope.\" First Monday (2009). 1 Jan. 2009. 3 Jan. 2009
<http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2317/2063>.
Case Study:
Twitter
Requirements
Twitter assignment (due Feb 26 before class) 10%
Trebor Scholz | The New School University | LCST 3073 A | Spring 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYP-wBaqQAI

Index slide# 5
Twitter and 100th Anniversary of the Manifesto of Futurism slide# 6
Why Does Micro-Blogging Matter? slide# 8
How Twitter Came To Be slide# 12
Twitter Anatomy slide# 18
Twitter Desktop Clients slide# 22
How Do People Use Twitter? slide# 30
Twitter in the Organization/in Education slide# 41
Twitter as a Citizen News-Wire? slide# 48
Twitter, War, Catastrophe slide# 52
Search slide# 56
Reading slide# 59
Twitter Assignment slide# 61
Trebor Scholz | The New School University | LCST 3073 A | Spring 2009

Micro-Blogging and the
100th Anniversary
of the
Manifesto of Futurism

The Manifesto of
Futurism
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1909)
•youth, technology, speed
Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/%27Unique_Forms_of_Continuity_in_Space%27%2C_1913_bronze_by_Umberto_Boccioni.jpg

Why Does
Micro-Blogging Matter?

What they say about Twitter
howardowens: \"Twitter is a salon in 140 characters.\"
uchicagolaw: Twitter allows us to give prospective students a bite-sized glimpse into what life here is like.
memoirgirl: \"Now I'm not just funny to myself.\"
calixte: \"I use my Cognitive Surplus to do some Mindcasting, using the ultimate Blip Machine: Twitter.\"
dangillmor: \"Twitter is a current (and sometimes early) warning and gossip system, with occasional insight
and frequent amusement.\"
tiffanyvonemmel: \"Twitter is how I meet with busy people. It replaces email. At academic conferences, I use
Twitter to demonstrate the performative turn of knowledge.\"
DW: \"Twitter is my shared notepad. If I want to remember something and I don't mind if everyone else
knows it, I just post it here.\"
HarryWaisbren: \"I find twitter useful to engage journalists, bloggers, and academics casually whereas
within other mediums they would resist.\"
ryansholin: \"Twitter is a connection engine that costs nothing. No bar tab, no conference registration, no
commitment. Just 140 characters.\"
selected from: http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2009/01/04/chronicle_hlp.html#comment52073

Why Does Micro-Blogging Matter?
(A Preliminary List)
• Inconspicuous way of staying in touch with the passions and obsessions of your friends,
colleagues, and experts. What are they paying attention to right now (short messages and also
photos)?
• Update people on what you are writing on your blog
• Social capital, “The Strength of Weak Ties” (Granovetter, 1973)
• Live search: abbreviated live-blogging of a group.
Twitter as live-version of social bookmarking services like Delicious-- ask questions
• Art (i.e, Jenny Holzer, Joseph Kosuth)
• Twitter as news-wire and citizen journalism.
• Citizen volunteerism and fundraising: (i.e., Twestival)
Trebor Scholz | The New School University | LCST 3073 A | Spring 2009

Why Does Micro-Blogging Matter?
(A Preliminary List)
• File sharing
(with the help of services like http://www.acamin.com/ you can share files up to 15 MB)
• Event live micro-blogging, 140 characters at a time
(i.e., group of people covering simultaneous sessions at a conference)
• Informal social learning (acculturating into communities of practice, evidence of learning
process, shareable teaching, reach beyond classroom, access to information becomes access to
people who know, self-organized communities). Examples: surgery
• Post-disaster relief (i.e, Mumbai bombings, Gustav)
• Increase intra-organizational linkages, connection to larger community and transparency
(i.e., universities, U.S. State Department)
Trebor Scholz | The New School University | LCST 3073 A | Spring 2009

How Twitter Came To Be

Attention and Media
Trebor Scholz | The New School University | LCST 3073 A | Spring 2009

Making a More “Live” LiveJournal
May 31st, 2000
“One night in July of that year I had an idea to make
a more \"live\" LiveJournal. Real-time, up-to-date, from
the road. Akin to updating your AIM status from
wherever you are, and sharing it. For the next 5 years,
I thought about this concept and tried to silently
introduce it into my various projects.
The 6th year; the idea has finally solidified .... and taken a
novel form. We're calling it twttr (though this original
rendering calls it stat.us; I love the word.ed domains,
e.g. gu.st). “
jack dorsey
http://flickr.com/photos/jackdorsey/182613360/
Trebor Scholz | The New School University | LCST 3073 A | Spring 2009

First Tweet
http://flickr.com/photos/jackdorsey/182614595/in/photostream/
Trebor Scholz | The New School University | LCST 3073 A | Spring 2009

Twitter as part of a literate tradition of concision
For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.
-Ernest Hemingway
5th or 6th century: koans first appeared in China
17th century: Shakespeare was praising short and snappy punch lines in Hamlet
haiku master Japanese poet Matsuo Basho
In a telegram exchange attributed to both Oscar Wilde and
Victor Hugo, the curious writer inquires about sales of his
recent book by sending his publisher a lone: ?
The response, of course, was: !
Orwell: \"if it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out\"
Noam Chomsky \"The beauty
of concision, is that you can
only repeat conventional
thoughts.\"
Jenny Holzer:
\"Abuse of power comes
as no surprise\"
http://www.amazon.com/Six-Word-Memoirs-Love-Heartbreak-Writers/dp/0061714623

Words, Words, Words
twitterific
dweet (tweet sent while drunk)
twead (reading a twitter post)
tweeple
tweeps (peeps on Twitter)
tweetaholism
tweetheart not to be mistaken with tweetard
tweetUp (Twitter users meet in person)
twibute (to pay tribute to someone)
twirting (flirting on Twitter)
twitch (when you twitter a typo)
“How to win friends and twinfluence people?”

Twitter Anatomy

Twitter in Plain English
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o

The Anatomy of Twitter
Retweet
RT (Your clever words passed on by dozens of people)
D Direct Messages
(not public, used by 25% of users)
URL shortening (for link sharing)
#
“Tweets” (can’t edit, 140 characters)
Replies
@ (public)
“followers”
Trends “following” (start with 15-20)
TwitPic
Trebor Scholz | The New School University | LCST 3073 A | Spring 2009

Don’t read
your feeds o
n Twitter.co
m

Twitter Desktop Clients

http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/

For useful responses to frequently asked questions about Tweetdeck also see:
http://www.richardbarley.com/2009/02/22/all-your-tweetdeck-questions-answered/

http://friendfeed.com/

“Shareaholic” Firefox add-on let’s you post to many sites right from Firefox
http://www.shareaholic.com/

Tweetie for iPhone
-- multiple Twitter accounts
http://www.atebits.com/software/tweetie/

-Buzz Group Break-
What question would you most like to have answered
regarding the topic of the lecture today?
Of all ideas and points you have heard so far today, which is
the most obscure or ambiguous to you?
What is the most contentious statement you heard in the
lecture so far?

Questions
Is writing status updates a waste of time? What are the disadvantages and opportunities of
engaging in online conversations and sharing practices (video, photos)?
What are some reasons for the recent success of Twitter?
Are novels passé? Do even email, videos on
Lonelygirl15 and Instant Messaging take up too much
time now?
Which way of using Twitter worked best for you?
How can micro-blogging help you to distribute your
ideas?
What is the difference between “friendship” on Twitter
and Facebook?
Trebor Scholz | LCST 3073 A | Spring 2009

How Do People Use Twitter?

US Diplomats Start Twittering, ...
“For security reasons, the congressional delegation led by House Minority
Leader John Boehner to Iraq today was supposed to be secret. Everything had
been going fine in that regard. Even media outlets that knew of the trip, like the
Congressional Quarterly, kept a lid on the news.
That was, until Rep. Peter Hoekstra twittered his arrival into Baghdad. \"Just
landed in Baghdad. I believe it may be first time I've had bb
service in Iraq. 11th trip here,\" he sent from his BlackBerry. “
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10159054-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

http://tweetcongress.org/

http://twitter.com/CSIState

Erykah Badu twitters her child birth \"This f*cking hurts like hell!\"
\"I'm gonna kill this doctor if he does't get this thing out of me.\"
\"Why isn't Andre 3000 here yet?\"

http://twestival.com/
“Do this TODAY:
1. Read 5 Ways to Help Twestival Raise $1 Million, then go to http://4charitymate.com and give what you can
2. Attend your local Twestival event. (check http://Twestival.com) Have fun and donate again
3. Tweet to let your followers know it’s Twestival day
4. Post a blog, Facebook Note, MySpace Bulletin or whatever you can
5. Mail to your mailing list.. tell them all how important Twesitval is to the world
6. Leave a comment here so we can share your blog post with others”

http://www.botanicalls.com/kits/

Twittering Surgery
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/health/2009/02/16/cohen.twittering.in.the.or.cnn

http://twitter.com/guydebord
http://twitter.com/jennyholzer

http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLzSgtG29is
Daniel Schorr (91) starts to twitter.
Twitter reminds him of the Agora, which was an open
\"place of assembly,\" a market place in ancient Greece (900s–700s BCE).

Twitter in the Organization
Engage or Die!

Twitter in the Organization
•Learn what people say about you and join that conversation
•Find experts in your field on Twellow.com or Twitter Search
•What do they think about your organization?
•Twitter as possibility for creating intellectual community.
•Organizational: quick way to point to problems.
•Of course, it only works if people make an effort to use it.
Trebor Scholz | The New School University | LCST 3073 A | Spring 2009

http://twuffer.com/home
Twuffer allows the Twitter user to compose a list of future tweets, and schedule their release. You can tweet hourly/daily/monthly announcements.

http://www.tweetlater.com/

Twitter in Education
• Chat with your professor or other students after class
• Collaborate on a project. Start a conversation thread.
• In-class back channel
•Follow the tweets of professionals
• Share your teaching resources beyond the class room
Trebor Scholz | The New School University | LCST 3073 A | Spring 2009

http://www.tweetworks.com/

twtpoll could become a useful research tool for informal surveys: http://twtpoll.com/

Twitter as Citizen News-Wire?

A Few Places to Start
Breaking News Alerts Wired
@BreakingNewsOn @wired
Associated Press
New York Times
@associatedpress @nytimes
Brian Lehrer WNYC
Washington Post
@BrianLehrer
@washingtonpost
A Few People
Nicholas Kristof (NYT)
@nytimeskristof
Howard Rheingold
@hrheingold
Danica Radovanovic
@DanicaR

US Airways Flight 1549, January 15 2009
“There's a plane in the Hudson.
I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy,”
J Krums in a 3:50 p.m.
Faster than Associate Press (AP)
(i.e., BBC follows Twitter to stay on top of events)
- PRO: In several instances Twitter received updates faster than
TV or news websites: new outlet for citizen journalism
- CON: Unreliable sources
TwitPic.com
The event was also caught on video; the footage was uploaded to Youtube.
In addition, hundreds of photos were added to Flickr.

Sports Reporting
David Weinberger twitters the Superbowl (@dweinberger) also search for #TwitterBowl
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=dweinberger+superbowl

Twitter, War, and Catastrophe

Twitter as tool for war reporting http://labs.aljazeera.net/warongaza/main

Insta-Reporting the Mumbai Bombings
December 2, 2008
“‘Grenade attack in Colaba market,’
read a Twitter message from a user named Abhishek Baxi last Wednesday.
Then a few minutes later. ‘Blast outside Oberoi Hotel in South Mumbai.’
A few years ago, sane people would have still argued that the whole point of taking your time with reporting a
story is so that you have a chance to synthesize facts, evaluate your sources, double-check and get your story
straight.” - David Sarno
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/12/mumbai-news-fis.html

http://gustavtracker.appspot.com/

Search
From access to information to access to knowledgeable people

tweetgrid.com

http://search.twitter.com/

Reading

Required Reading:
Huberman, Bernardo, Daniel Romero, and Fang Wu. \"Social networks that matter:
Twitter under the microscope.\" First Monday (2009). 1 Jan. 2009. 3 Jan. 2009
<http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2317/2063>.
Friendship and Twitter
Enter messages: followers may see it- to “follow” means to subscribe to people’s mini-blog posts
Only few “followers” and “followees” are in fact actual friends.
Twitter is unlike Facebook: You can follow somebody but they don’t have to follow you.

Twitter Assignment

Twitter Assignment
Due date February 26 (before class):
- Create a Twitter account.
1) Write a 140 characters explanation of Twitter and post it to Twitter.
2) Write a fictitious (or real) love letter in no more than 140 characters.
3) Write a real (or fictitious) breakup Twitter post.
4) How can Twitter be used in class? Suggest how we could make use of Twitter in
class. Post your idea to Twitter.
5) Comment on a current political event, add a link.
- Twitter at least sporadically until the end of the semester.
Trebor Scholz | The New School University | LCST 3073 A | Spring 2009

Trebor Scholz
scholzt@newschool.edu
Twitter: @trebors
Blog: http://www.collectivate.net/journalisms
Delicious: http://del.icio.us/trebor
Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/treborscholz
LibraryThing: http://www.librarything.com/profile/trebor

“The oldest among us are not yet thirty years old: we have therefore at least ten
years to accomplish our task. When we are forty let younger and stronger men
than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless manuscripts! They will
come against us from afar, leaping on the light cadence of their first poems,
clutching the air with their predatory fingers and sniffing at the gates of the
academies the good scent of our decaying spirits, already promised to the
catacombs of the libraries.”
[...]
Look at us! We are not out of breath, our hearts are not in the least tired. For they
are nourished by fire, hatred and speed! Does this surprise you? it is because you
do not even remember being alive! Standing on the world's summit, we launch once
more our challenge to the stars!”
-MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM

State of the Union: 2/24, 2009
http://search.twitter.com/