Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Thing 7


Welcome to Thing 7 :

Set up a Twitter account


What is Twitter ?
If Facebook is a high school reunion, than Twitter is a cocktail party ( . . .is how I once heard these two social media giants described).


Twitter used to ask the question, "What are you doing?" as we often ask or friends and family in conversation, but now asks "what's happening?" (You know, I 'm not sure when that changed? (answer: 19 Nov 2009) n.b., this link takes you to the Twitter blog; see that you can "follow" them on Twitter and subscribe to the blog via RSS).

From Wikipedia

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., that enables its users to send and read other user messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page. Tweets are publicly visible by default, however senders can restrict message delivery to their friends list. Users may subscribe to other author tweets—this is known as following and subscribers are known as followers. As of late 2009, users can follow lists of authors instead of following individual authors.[7][8] All users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, compatible external applications (such as, for smartphones), or by Short Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries.[9] While the service is free, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees. The website is based out in San Bruno, California near San Francisco (where the website was first based). Twitter also has servers and offices in San Antonio, Texas and Boston, Massachusetts.

Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide and currently has more than 100 million users worldwide.[10] It is sometimes described as the "SMS of the Internet."[11] The use of Twitter's application programming interface (API) for sending and receiving SMS from other applications often dominates the direct use of Twitter.


Sign up for a Twitter account using the instructions found here.

Search for people and institutions to follow with ideas from Twitter 101


a #NewTwitter is rolling out soon


My Twitter name is @Bibliojo :-) and I follow:


to name a few.

Don't forget to check your Twitter settings. Make them 'Private' if you wish; that means only approved Tweeters can see your tweets. There is tweet spam, which is usually easy to spot and block and ignore. (Look for nonsense names with lots of numbers in them; no short bio, few followers, and very few tweets). Although my tweets are open, I only follow people who have something written about themselves and their tweets are not all junk :)

Twitter to the rescue: answers in real time

question asked: answered in blog: see

the Mad Men, ep. 5: twitter trend, google bomb






4 comments:

  1. I'm reluctant to sign up for Twitter - I am uncomfortable about signing up for all these social media accounts and inadvertently leaving a trail that could compromise my privacy... Even without signing up each Thing is a helpful exercise in building awareness as to how these tools work.

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  2. I certainly wouldn't want you to do something that you are uncomfortable with, but I would point out that getting to know privacy settings is very important and of course not posting personal id numbers or anything of that nature is also important.
    As well, for those of us with children, we should be very aware of how this stuff works so that we can guide them, educate them in good use of social media and help them steer clear away from the pitfalls :)

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  3. I think I will hold off on tweeting, but I have set up an account and I have a handful of people/orgs that I follow. It's a start...

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