What is twitter?
Twitter is a place where people answer the question, "What are you doing now?" Every time you answer that question in 140 characters or less via the Twitter website, SMS, email, IM, or other Twitter client, it posts to your Twitter account. Posts are publicly viewable on the Twitter time line or can be made viewable just to friends or individuals.
Twitter gives you the chance to publish your thoughts quickly or to tune into the thoughts and information streams of other users from around the world. Twitter posts are ideal for making single points or sharing a single piece of information, like a link, instantly. Twitter is a microblog. Every time you post a new message, that message is relayed to all of the people in your friends list, published to your personal Twitter home page, and added to the public home page unless you tell it otherwise. Your tweets can also be posted to your blog, or other social networking sites to which you belong. In addition, Twitter offers the ability to send direct messages to any of those you follow, or who follow you, without their being part of the public Twitter stream.
There is a lot of information about Twitter. Here is an short introduction to what Twitter is and how to use it:
This Common Craft video of Twitter gives a simple explanation
Libraries and professional organisations using twitter
Lots of professional organisations, libraries and councils are using twitter to keep their clients informed.
Mosman Council
ALIA
DOK
Denver Public Library
New South Wales Reference and Information Services Group
Mylee and Ellen are both using twitter.
Please add a link to your library's twitter account in the comments on this blog.
Also have a look at this blog post by David Lee King about how not to tweet if you are a library and also at his slideshow about Tweet like you mean it!
You can search twitter for subjects of interest or people. Search twitter
You can also make is easier for people to search for information about an event or organisation by using #tags. For example if you are tweeting about this course use #nswlearning2.1
Write in your blog about what you found, what tweets were the most interesting or relevent?
Discover
Visit Twitter and sign up for a free account. Be sure to fill out your profile information so people will know something about you. Include your blog address if you want to increase traffic to your blog. Your name and username will be visible to Twitter users, but you can choose to keep your updates (tweets) private or put them on the public time line. Only approved friends will be able to see tweets for protected or private accounts. Since Twitter works best if you have a group of friends, colleagues, or family on Twitter with you, Twitter gives you the opportunity to invite friends to Twitter via email.
2. Try a few tweets. It's not as easy as it sounds to keep your messages to the short 140 character limit and still get your message across. Think of it as a challenge, like making a word with the letters you're given in Scrabble.
3 Find some people to follow.
4. If you are tweeting about the course include the following tag in your tweet #nswlearning2.1
5. If you have set up a Flickr account in the learning 2.0 course you can link it to your twitter account (as well as your blog). There are instructions how to set this up.
Blog Prompts
1. Blog about the experience and be sure to post your Twitter username there so others can see it and follow you. You might even like to share your twitter name in a comment at the end of this post.
2. Did you like micro-blogging? Do you love it, hate it or not sure? Explain.
3. How else could libraries use Twitter?
Ellen and Mylee
Twitter is a place where people answer the question, "What are you doing now?" Every time you answer that question in 140 characters or less via the Twitter website, SMS, email, IM, or other Twitter client, it posts to your Twitter account. Posts are publicly viewable on the Twitter time line or can be made viewable just to friends or individuals.
Twitter gives you the chance to publish your thoughts quickly or to tune into the thoughts and information streams of other users from around the world. Twitter posts are ideal for making single points or sharing a single piece of information, like a link, instantly. Twitter is a microblog. Every time you post a new message, that message is relayed to all of the people in your friends list, published to your personal Twitter home page, and added to the public home page unless you tell it otherwise. Your tweets can also be posted to your blog, or other social networking sites to which you belong. In addition, Twitter offers the ability to send direct messages to any of those you follow, or who follow you, without their being part of the public Twitter stream.
There is a lot of information about Twitter. Here is an short introduction to what Twitter is and how to use it:
This Common Craft video of Twitter gives a simple explanation
Libraries and professional organisations using twitter
Lots of professional organisations, libraries and councils are using twitter to keep their clients informed.
Mosman Council
ALIA
DOK
Denver Public Library
New South Wales Reference and Information Services Group
Mylee and Ellen are both using twitter.
Please add a link to your library's twitter account in the comments on this blog.
Also have a look at this blog post by David Lee King about how not to tweet if you are a library and also at his slideshow about Tweet like you mean it!
You can search twitter for subjects of interest or people. Search twitter
You can also make is easier for people to search for information about an event or organisation by using #tags. For example if you are tweeting about this course use #nswlearning2.1
Explore
Search twitter for what is being written about libraries (you may need to try a few different terms) and another subject of interest to youWrite in your blog about what you found, what tweets were the most interesting or relevent?
Discover
Visit Twitter and sign up for a free account. Be sure to fill out your profile information so people will know something about you. Include your blog address if you want to increase traffic to your blog. Your name and username will be visible to Twitter users, but you can choose to keep your updates (tweets) private or put them on the public time line. Only approved friends will be able to see tweets for protected or private accounts. Since Twitter works best if you have a group of friends, colleagues, or family on Twitter with you, Twitter gives you the opportunity to invite friends to Twitter via email.
2. Try a few tweets. It's not as easy as it sounds to keep your messages to the short 140 character limit and still get your message across. Think of it as a challenge, like making a word with the letters you're given in Scrabble.
3 Find some people to follow.
4. If you are tweeting about the course include the following tag in your tweet #nswlearning2.1
5. If you have set up a Flickr account in the learning 2.0 course you can link it to your twitter account (as well as your blog). There are instructions how to set this up.
Blog Prompts
1. Blog about the experience and be sure to post your Twitter username there so others can see it and follow you. You might even like to share your twitter name in a comment at the end of this post.
2. Did you like micro-blogging? Do you love it, hate it or not sure? Explain.
3. How else could libraries use Twitter?
Ellen and Mylee
