Do you tweet? When my rural electric company turned off my power for repairs this summer, I called complaining about not having notice given about the outage. I had four sump pumps pumping water out of my basement and new baby chicks that needed their heat lamp. I needed to know that the power was going out! They, my power company, informed me that the outage was tweeted on Twitter Mountrail Williams Electric Company. So hearing these words from the power company, as well as on the radio and tv, I decided I needed to investigate what Twitter and tweeting were all about in this social networking society of ours.
Twitter is a new sensation in social media that is gaining popularity although it was developed in 2006 Twitter created. According to Pew Internet and American Life Project, "13% of online adults use Twitter" (2011, June 1). So what is Twitter? Twitter is a social networking device that allows you to send small quick messages Twitter. These messages are called tweets. There are also retweets that you can use when you copy and paste tweets received to send to others Retweet. People use Twitter for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it is used for information; sometimes it is for business and other times for personal reasons Uses.
So why Twitter? Twitter allows you to obtain links to individuals, businesses and other pieces of information Why Twitter? What is amazing is the networking capabilities. Family and friends can sign up for your Twitter page. In return you can sign up for theirs. All of the tweets and retweets from family, friends, businesses and so forth are now part of your networking system. The network that you started with one small tweet keeps growing. The other incredible part to this system is the messages are limited to 140 characters. Through researching Twitter, the common theme that was clear is to keep the message concise as you only have 140 characters. Of course you want to make sure that your tweets are useful Tweets. People that tweet just to tweet may be filtered as irrelevant information Noise.
Is this all there is to Twitter? Absolutely not. This is just a brief overview of this social networking system. I have begun following two organizations on Twitter and yes one of them is the power company! I hope to keep developing my Twitter capabilities. I encourage you to tweet if you have not. Just remember to tweet appropriately and succinctly. You only have 140 characters and you don't want to be filtered! Good luck tweeting.
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Key words: Twitter, tweet, retweet
References:
Cromie, J. (2009, Jan. 9). 8 Sure-Fire Ways to Tick Off the Twitterverse. Retrieved from
http://www.twitip.com/8-sure-fire-ways-to-tick-off-the-twitterverse/#more-973
Lasic, T. (2009). Why Twitter? Retrieved from
http://www.slideshare.net/moodlefan/why-twitter
Minz, T. (n.d.). Power Tweeting: 101 Everyday Uses for Twitter. Retrieved from
http://www.insidecrm.com/features/101-twitter-uses-052008/
Newsblaze LLC. (2011). What is Twitter? Retrieved from
http://tweeternet.com/
Parr, B. (2009, April 16). How to: Retweet on Twitter. Retrieved from
http://mashable.com/2009/04/16/retweet-guide/
Pew Internet and American Life Project. (2011, June 1). Twitter Use. Retrieved from
http://www.pewinternet.org/Static-Pages/Series/Twitter.aspx
Sagolla, T. (2009, Jan. 30). How Twitter was Born. Retrieved from
http://www.140characters.com/2009/01/30/how-twitter-was-born/
Wauters, R. (2009, Jan. 29). Too Much Noise on Twitter? Filttr Will Tell You What's Worth Reading.
Retrieved from
http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/28/too-much-noise-on-twitter-filttr-will-tell-you-whats-%20worth-reading/
I am--perhaps--a bit embarrassed that I have never "tweeted" before, and yet I knock it as an inadequate form of social media. I can say that I have never even contemplated using twitter (except for 2009, when VCSU notified students about the campus closure via a twitter account). That was when Twitter was still relatively new and unused. Now, the whole world is tweeting to their hearts content. I am not sure I will ever fully understand Twitter's usefulness, but I do hope to explore its possibilities someday.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! Very informational and useful.
I will not use twitter. I also am not using google+. I think that one day I will use both of these but not for the sake of merely social networking. I think that it is great that you enjoy twitter and clearly about 250 million other people enjoy it as well. I will use twitter to promote my business but that is just about it. I think that Facebook is already too much to keep up to date with. The reason that I don't blow all of these off is that they are such a large world. This morning I read an article that websites with twitter and Facebook icons are likely to get visited 7 times more than websites without. That is an incredible number and clearly there is reason to use twitter, but for the most part I like my life the way it is without it for right now.
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