Twittering

From "The Lamplighter", Wisconsin Valley (WI) Library Service, April 2009.

"To Tweet or Not to Tweet"

The next time someone tells you "I don't get Twitter, it seems kinda stoopid to me. What's it all about?" You will have this as an answer...Twitter is a short message routing service - messages are limited to a maximum of 140 characters. This length restriction makes "tweets" (Twitter messages) equivalent to cell phone "texts" but with a difference: text messagesare essentially one-to-one, whereas tweets are one-to-many.

The core of social networking is that there's a commons, a shared area, wherein people communicate. Normal e-mail has no commons. Blogs have localized commons and there's usually a specific focus to the hierarchical discussion, the post's topic, and editorial control over the thread. Twitter has a global commons and there's no restriction (other than on length) to what is posted and no enforced hierarchy.All of these forms of commounication are almost like a poort man's email. Here's the way to view these differnt forms of communications: email is like person-to-person phone calls while blogs are like lectures with follow-up questions and idcussions. But social media, such as Twitter, are like a cocktail party.

So why Twitter? According to a blog entry on Compete.com in February, Twitter ranks as the third largest social network with six million users and fifty-five million monthly visitors (Facebooks is number one and MySpace number two).

How you can use Twitter:
Twitness - which involves a few hundred Twitterers watching something, such as the Academy Awards show, and tweeting about the show with all sorts of funny remarks about the clothes, etc. It turns something solitary like TV watching into an interactive experience.
Breaking News - when a major news event happens, often a Twitterer will be there and share their experience faster than the cops can cordon off the spot.
Communications - a great way to broadcast a quick message to other co-workers wokring out in the field without having to contact them each individually.
Feedback - an instantaneous way to respond to a question or comment versus using e-mail.
Crowd-sourcing and Information Polling - you can poll people who are your Twitter followers about a question you have or conduct an informal survey.
Public Address System - you can use Twitter to announce the start of something or to promote a product or service to your followers.