What is Twitter? Mix of RSS and personal impromptu microblog receivable through phone texting; More of a passive notification scheme - not necessarily read. See more at Wikipedia's Twitter entry.
Some ways Twitter is used:
• NY Times Digital - Automated Twitter feeds - a replacement for RSS Feeds?
• Instant Messaging role ( not the main thing for Twitter - but there is an app called yammers), public or private
• Excellent for PR and customer service e.g. Southwest airlines - first come first served seating, hotels (forget which one, also tweets)
• Retweets for a cause - charity fundraising.
• Event notification - #tag makes searching for event easy - makes syndication easy to notify folks on what's happening right there - portable via cell phone or smartphone - 27% are using twitter on their mobile devices. Try searching for #necc09, #csesi09 to see all the tweets related to these events. You don't need a Twitter account to search and retrieve results.
If I wanted to go the whole experience, where to sign up?
http://www.twitter.com
Are Tweets archived?
There is a search engine, only 1200 of each is listed. Anecdotally it's 4 to 2 months depending on how heavy the twitter load is. Not yet gotten to the point where you can search back for a year and gotten everything that was said.How to receive tweets as text messages on cell phone?
From your account, under the Settings menu, go to Device tab and enter your cell phone number to enable the device. Once you get a verification from Twitter, you can start specifying the person whose tweets you want to receive as text messages. For example, if you want to get updates from Septa, send to Twitter's phone number (40404) and put "ON septa" (without the quotes). When you want to stop it, send another message and put "STOP septa" (without the quotes).
Downsides:
1. Who speaks for the account if it is a corporate account? More useful for personal accounts.2. Twitterjacking happened during the Iran election troubles.
3. Scaling problem: how do you manage the interaction if you have thousands of followers. If you follow many people, you have infoglut.
4. Privacy and anonymity cannot be ensured.
5. Certain "followers" can be troublesome.
Tips and tricks
1. making your tweets less personal and more broad a good idea2. specific events/topics can be a "username" e.g. Nature breaking news alert. Apollo40
Learn how to search Twitter beyond the basic search:
http://www.twitip.com/welcome-to-the-hive-mind-learn-how-to-search-twitter/To learn more about Twitter and new ways to use it:
see Mashable: The Social Media Guidehttp://mashable.com/category/twitter-lists/
To learn more about how to teach Twitter in the classroom:
See 100 Tips, Tools, and Resources for Teaching Students About Social MediaResources By Tara Miller
http://tinyurl.com/lns8fr
/Last 3 links courtesy of Garrett Eastman at Harvard, Pat Viele, and Joe Kraus
at University of Denver, Deborah Kolah at Rice University/
Connexions