More about Twitter, and how I use it

There have been a lot of questions about Twitter in the course this week, and many preconceptions have been breaking down or shifting into new learning about the tool and how it is used. I thought that I would share some interesting Twitter related links, and then give a brief rundown of how I use Twitter.

First, anyone wanting a nice little primer on how to participate in Twitter should check out Vadim Lavrusik's "10 Commandments of Twitter Etiquette."

Twitter can be used in a variety of fun ways. One person is using it to post recipes, for example (hat tip to student Susan H. for the story/link.) There are all kinds of different forms of dialogue going on on Twitter, enough that the Library of Congress announced it has acquired the entirety of Twitter's content for its collection. It's amazing stuff.

But why should you use Twitter?

Well first, you don't have to use it any more than you have to use any specific Social Media tool or platform. It can, however, have uses that range from mundane to eccentric to powerful. To help you get a handle on how you could use it, I'm going to describe how I use it.

My first exposure to Twitter was of the insipid ways it is used (warning, a couple of bleeped-out words, but otherwise clean):



Then I went to a conference. Immediate it became evident that there was an entire third of the conference goers on their laptops during the entire time, trading ideas, comments, and reactions to what was going on on stage. Some of it was snarky, some of it was informative. Almost all of it was brilliant. By not being a participant, I was missing out on the very important discussions the audience was having as a result of what was being presented. I ended up spending a lot of time following the discussion over one of the other audience member's shoulders.

(Anyone thinking about creating a Twitter conversation at an event, check out tools like TodaysMeet that create temporary chat rooms based around specific hashtags. Also, though, I caution you to pay attention to the potential downsides, and advise organizers to project the Twitter stream on a wall to prevent them.)

I do now have a Twitter account, and I do post things to it now and then, especially links to things I am working on, or things I find that are interesting that I think those who follow me would enjoy reading. Mostly, though, I use it as a source of information rather than an outlet to disseminate it. I follow numerous individuals in local print media, in the arts, and in the public sector, as well as in areas like transportation, public policy, and ope data, all subjects I have passions for.

Do I spend all day on Twitter? Yes. And no. And this is where, just as with Google Reader, you can find tools that assist you in managing Social Media smartly.

In my case, it's a tool called "twhirl." Twhirl is a small application that sits open on my desktop, and which displays the latest tweets from people I am following. (It also allows me to post if I wish to.) It can run in the background, unobtrusive, and anytime I want to, I can glance from what I am working on to the list and see if anything interesting has shown up.

(Note there are other Twitter desktop applications than Twhirl that are available. Twhirl is just the one I use.)

The way I am using Twitter, then, could be best thought of in the same way as television. Instead of leaving a TV on all day, tuned into a news channel like CNN, I have a Twitter stream "broadcasting" to a small portion of my computer screen most of the day. Just like TV, I only pay significant attention to it when it has something that interests me, and the rest of the time it just runs in the background. And just like TV, sometimes I like some time away and I turn it off. (If I get really busy I might turn it off for a week or so.)

What advantage do I get from this? I get to find out what others are talking about in real time. For example, right now on Twhirl, I see a few tweets that have no interest for me at all, but I also see a post linking to a newly posted story on the Mercury about the future of the Oregon Symphony, links to stories about locating and managing parking in retail areas as well as the latest news on a transit project in Oakland, and a link to some interviews with public officials about open government and web-enabled government.

I built the network of people I follow through the following methods:

Seeking out the accounts of people who attended the conference I attended immediately after the conference, and following them;

Looking at the blogs I read most and finding their Twitter accounts;

Paying attention to recommendations my contacts on Twitter make each Friday, when it is traditional to tweet recommendations of others that you follow (see Friend Friday on the 10 Commandments article);

Looking for Twitter accounts of friends and coworkers;

Searching Twitter for specific organizations or people you find interesting;

Search for hash tags related to subjects you are interested in, and then find people who tweet a lot about them, and follow them.

I know I've run long but I hope that you've gotten something useful out of this about Twitter. Who knows, maybe you can now think of a way you might like to use it.