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What is Twitter?
Copyright 2008 Christine Crawford
Twitter is in the midst of changing the interface. When these changes are complete, I will update the screen shots and instructions.
Twitter is a microblogging web application to which users register and contribute. Microblogging is a combination of blogging and instant messaging. Each post (tweet) is limited to 140 characters to answer the question “What are you doing?” Twitter is the self-proclaimed “telegraph system of Web 2.0.” Some people call it the “water cooler” of the web. Twitter enables users to stay in immediate contact with all members of their twitter network via phone, web or IM.
How does it work?
Register
1. Go to Twitter.com
2. Click the “Get Started-Join!” button
3. Choose a Username, password and enter your email address
4. Enter the “Humanness” code (nonsense words designed to deter bots)
5. Accept the terms of service
6. Click “I accept. Create my account.”
7. Create your profile
Search
This is one of those pesky changes I was talking about - the Search function is hiding for the time being
Once you register your twitter account, you can begin by finding people with common interests whom you would like to follow. On the top of the screen, near the twitter logo, enter a key word into the search box. For example, to find other instructional designers, I typed in “instructional design” and found and followed 75 people. Eight of those people were in turn following me by the next morning, and two more were added during the day. As of today I am following 187 people and I have 90 followers. I instantly gained a large network of colleagues in instructional design who were a majority of experienced professionals and a few other students.
Following
When you find someone whose messages (tweets) you want to track, click the “Follow” button. This will add the person to your list of people you follow and insert their profile icon on your page. When someone follows you, they will be in your list of followers.
Homepage
The homepage shows the number of people following you and their profile pictures. The homepage also shows the number of people you follow, the number of direct messages and favorites you have. You can customize your home page by adding an image to the background and changing the colors. You can also choose to protect your updates which will require people to ask your permission to follow you.
Posting
Posts are displayed in reverse chronologic order (most recent one on top). Each tweet displays the ID of the person posting, the body of the message, the amount of time since the tweet was posted and where it was posted from (i.e. the web, phone, IM).
The @ symbol
Using the @ symbol before an ID directs a twitter at another person, and causes the message to save in their "replies" tab. i.e. @idtweets + yourtext. The message remains in the public message area for all to see, whereas a direct message is sent privately.
Direct Messages
Private or direct messages can be sent two ways: 1) by typing the letter "D" before the ID you're sending to i.e. D idtweets +yourtext and 2) by clicking the “Direct Messages” link. This takes you to a page where you can choose to communicate with anyone following you. Direct messages will not be displayed in the public area for anyone to read. You are notified that you have received a direct message by an increased number of direct messages listed on the home page. This is not a very effective way to receive messages, so it’s helpful to set your “Notices” under the “Settings” link to receive an email whenever you get a direct message.
Tracking Words
Twitter allows people to receive notification when certain words are posted. For example, to get updates on the SLEDcc '08 conference, type "track SLEDcc" (without quotes) into the "What are you doing?" text box. Click Update and you will be notified whenever someone posts the word.
One catch...this only works on SMS and Instant messaging.
Using Mobile Devices
To received tweets on your phone:
2) Enter your phone number with no spaces or dashes4) Verify the phone number by sending the verification code to 40404
3) Click in the check box "It’s okay for Twitter to send txt messages to my phone. Standard rates apply."
Use the following codes to control your tweets on the phone:
Device Basics: turning Twitter off and on
* ON: turns ALL device notifications on. (device = your phone or IM) * OFF: turns ALL device notifications off. * STOP, QUIT: stops all messages to your device immediately
* ON username: turns on notifications for a specific person on your device. For example, ON alissa. * OFF username: turns off notifications for a specific person on your device. For example, OFF blaine.
* FOLLOW username: this command allows you to start receiving notifications for a specific person on your device. Example: follow jeremy * LEAVE username: this command allows you to stop receiving notifications for a specific person on your device. Example: leave benfu
What’s the point?
Many people wonder "What is the point of Twitter? Who really wants to know what I am doing??"
In order explain the point of Twitter and why its popularity has exploded, I think it’s important to first explain social networking and communities of practice.
Social Networking and Communities of Practice
Social networks are comprised of people we know, who know other people we know, and so on. Each individual in the network serves as a hub for other people. In this way, we exchange information, whether it’s personal, professional or of general interest.
Twitter has the potential to contribute to social networking and the participatory web in its capacity to bring people closer to one another through sharing of personal information. One example of this is George Siemens. Dr. Siemens is one of the authors of the idea of Connectivism. I met Dr. Siemens in an online conference, presented on Connectivism with him in the same room (scary) and read his blog elearnspace.org. But before I started following him in Twitter, I didn’t know that he travels a lot and recently went to Africa to present on e-learning, or that he has a pretty good sense of humor. “Finally. finally in Accra. Hotel wasn't reserved (though I paid in advance). Now in some facility that should technically
charge by the hour 04:26 PM May 27, 2008 from web” and i guess i'm old fashioned, but i've personally come to enjoy fuel in aircraft i'm flying. To date, I haven't flown without. Why change now? 01:33 PM May 31, 2008 from web “Get to the airport, KLM hands me a letter: "in view of the fact that presently there is no aircraft fuel available in Accra..." cool. 01:26 PM May 31, 2008 from web” These posts may not be relevant to the idea of Connectivism, but they help break down the walls between professor/blogger/presenter and student.
Wenger defines communities of practice, “Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope. In a nutshell:
Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.
The example above, in which I created an account specifically for following instructional designers, demonstrates the power of Twitter for communities of practice. With 48 hours I am following 98 people in instructional design and 21 of them are following me. Many of the posts are personal, and I am getting to know people on a “human” level. At the same time, I am learning about Vista, Facebook widgets and the global commons. I'm having a direct message conversation about wikis and Moodle with a senior instructional designer I've never met.
I even had a chance to contribute to a very popular blogger’s list of virtual worlds for kids; he was writing the list and tweeted a request: "List of Social Networks or Virtual Worlds for Youth, or Boomers or Retired http://tinyurl.com/5hr74o What's missing? about 20 hours ago from web" I went to his blog and contributed; something I would never have known about if he had not posted to Twitter:
Christine Crawford June 11th, 2008 12:43 pm
Second Life Teen Grid and Pixie Hollow, disney. Also have Alice.org which is for drag and drop programming of virtual worlds. Fun.
In fact, he had six responses within 15 minutes of his blog post which significantly contributed to his original work
Here's the post.
Where did the idea come from?
In this video, Jack Dorsey shares the origination of the ideas for Twitter. Dispatching of digital information became the foundation for the programming code he wrote. He and his coworkers created the project and used it to communicate with one another. In 2007 Jack launched the project as Twitter and became the CEO.
Who uses Twitter?
According to Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, 60% of twitter uses are from outside of the US. Users are generally young males
Inside the US, a little over half of the users only visit once. Heavy users tweet 6 or more times a month, and light users tweet 2- 5 times a month. Most Twitter users are currently male.
When do people tweet?
Twitter users typically user their social networks more frequently during the weekdays. The graph below shows usage for the past 30 days. The valleys all occur on weekends.
How do people use Twitter?
Typical uses
• Chat with friends about what you’re doing at the moment, “Typing my report on twitter – lots of fun!”
• Tell friends about an interesting new article you found, "Look! Twitter is in the news!”
• Reporting Technical information, “Here’s a Twitter API for Linux"
Emerging uses
Twitter is a very new technology which is still emerging in ways the creators probably never imagined.
• Political candidates are using twitter to communicate with constituents. (Obama is on my list of friends)
• Event coverage - Conference organizers use twitter to advertise conferences and provide a backchannel of communication for attendees.
• Library information and research
• Crisis reporting – LA Times used twitter to report and communicate when there were brush fires
• “man on the street” reporting – a man in California tweets that he feels a tremor, his friend responds by saying he thinks it was a 3.5, and the official report from USGS that the earthquake was a 3.7 comes out on twitter later that day. (Dorsey video)
• Breaking news tweets: CNN, ESPN, LATimesfires
• Advertising: companies using Twitter to alert customers of special sales and to get customer feedback.
• Pleas for help: American student used his Twitter network to free himself from Egyptian jail
• Team communication – one-to-many
Examples of event coverage
Andy Carvin covered the Hillary Clinton Election Night Remarks in NYC on June 3, 2008 as it was happening. I read it here while I worked on other stuff.
Here’s the transcript of the speech: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/speech/view/?id=7897
Educational uses
• Brainstorming
• Organizing idea
• Forces learners to be concise
• Note taking
• Getting help answering a student question you don’t know the answer to
• Set up office hours on twitter to answer student questions
• Meeting place for collaborations
• Technical assistance during class
• Conduct experiments and tweet about them (and archive for later review and discussion)
• Building the sense of community for a class using networking and real time interaction
Barbara Ganley writes in her blog:
I like Twitter for its asynchronous, forced concision and can see my students this fall, in a course on writing in the 21st century, exploring collaborative writing (line by line, if you will--Twitter poetry, I suppose) as well as sharing and editing titles and concise thesis statements (for old-school academic writing).
I also want to explore students using tweets to send out questions and observations to the group while engaged in the "solo work" of the course--the reading and ruminating and writing that so often happens alone. How might sending links and notes this way deepen and broaden our learning experience together?
From The Chronicle of Higher Education "A Professor's tips for using twitter in the classroom"
"The immediacy of the messages helped the students feel like more of a community, Mr. Parry said in an interview Monday. “It was the single thing that changed the classroom dynamics more than anything I’ve ever done teaching,” he said.
Although Twitter was not created for education, the potential for educational use is there. Just like the Internet and virtual worlds, innovative instructors are formulating ideas, discovering and inventing uses that are far from the original intent.
Issues and concerns
• Although the small, short bursts of thought required by Twitter can in some ways be an advantage, this can also be something to consider when using for education.
• Keep in mind that not a lot of deep thought can be generated in 140 words or less.
• Many people use Twitter to write meaningless information about themselves. What is the value in this? It brings us closer to each other as humans and may even alleviate some of the digital isolation so many people are concerned about. This is largely a good thing, but using Twitter as an instructional tool may require that this is kept to an acceptable level.
• Twitter is a new technology originally created for a small number of people. The Twitter team is constantly working to re-fit the infrastructure to withstand millions of users. This often causes usage issues. Use the Twitter blog (blog.twitter.com) to stay on top of things.
Application Programming Interface (API)
Much of the attraction of Twitter for developers comes in with the API. Examples of APIs for Twitter include:
• Twhirl, Twitterific and other clients
• Twitpics
• Geopositioning
• Second Life
• Moodle
• Twemes
Twitter clients
There are a few software clients for Twitter users which don’t require them to go to the web to check and post tweets. The two more highly ranked are:
• Twitterifc by Iconfactory for Macs
• Twhirl for Windows (it's free)
The clients are useful because they allow you to have many of the API features available in one place, and you can log in to more than one account at a time.
Twitpics
When you share photos on Twitpic, the photo and description are sent to your twitter feed for all your friends to see. It's also sent to the public twitpic timeline for all registered users to see and comment.
Geopositioning
Photos can also be associated with google maps and geopositioning using Twitpic.
An API for Facebook application so people can tweet directly from their profile pages.
Second Life
A programmer in Second Life created a head's up display (HUD) which allows users to send tweets to their account using the in-world chat function. The HUD checks the twitter feed every minute (as long as it's being worn) and notifies the user when new tweets arrive by posting to the in-world chat.
Moodle
Ann Jeffery at the University of Southampton and her team at the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is building and testing a series of blocks for Moodle and Second Life. Moodle is an open source course management system. The project is called M3 and is the first Twitter block written for Moodle.
Twemes
Twemes are a simple way to keep track of your tweets. Twemes.com follows posts made to twitter.com. Using a tag ("hashtag" or "tweme") your tweet will be posted to twemes.com by the hashtag you used. For example, when twittering a conference, you could choose a hashtag of "ISTE08" and then in your tweet, you add "#ISTE08" (without the quotes). Twemes allow us to search the entire "twitterverse" to find what people are saying about something. The trick is to remember to include the tag!
Step by step instructions on using twemes:
1) In the search box on your home page, type in #hashtag
2) Click "follow" on the option that matches
3) Go back to your home page and type in a post that includes a hashtag
4) Your post should have a link in it; follow that link to see the post on twemes.
Conclusions
People use twitter to keep connected. If someone gives out information you’re not interested in (like when they’re going on lunch break), drop them from your friends list. Twitter can be customized to be used to meet your needs and interests; just like any other social network. Twitter can do many things for us, some of them are still emerging. But thing it certainly does is help us bring out our human side. We get to really know people using twitter – and that’s a good thing.
Resources
http://ndwild.psych.und.nodak.edu/book/
http://www.umanitoba.ca/learning_technologies/connectivisim/bio_george.php
http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm
http://www.slideshare.net/Silver_Tomorrow/lifelong-learning-in-the-digital-age
http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/
http://www.ewenger.com/theory/
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2008/06/twitter-reports.html
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/twittering-command-line
http://www.teachinglibrarian.org/weblog/2007/05/reference-services-and-twitter.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/05/twitter.maree/index.html
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/speech/view/?id=7897
http://mt.middlebury.edu/middblogs/ganley/bgblogging/
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2699/a-professors-tips-for-using-twitter-in-the-classroom
http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/web/api-documentation
