1) What is it? Twitter
is an online application that is part blog, part social networking
site, part cell phone/IM tool, designed to let users answer the
question “What are you doing?†Users have 140 characters for each
posting or “tweet†to say whatever they care to say. Many tweets do
answer the question of what the user is doing, but plenty of others are
responses to other tweets, pointers to online resources that the user
found interesting, musings, or questions. Similar to social networking
sites like Facebook — which has itself evolved to include mini-updates
— Twitter lets users create formal friendships, which collectively
establish numerous and interconnected networks of users. In addition,
Twitter works with cell phones and other SMS clients, making it an easy
way for mobile users to stay in touch virtually anywhere.
2) Who’s doing it? Although
Twitter launched in March 2006, the number of Twitterers and the amount
of attention the site has received grew considerably in the first half
of 2007. A lot of people are talking about it, and plenty are using it,
including some presidential candidates, well-known high-tech gurus, and
celebrities. Although it’s unclear whether college students are using
Twitter in large numbers, many IT professionals in higher education
have become active users, as have a number of faculty.
In
many cases, a Twitterer is not an individual but a group of people, an
organization (or part of it), or an event. Live Earth 2007, for
example, a global concert to increase awareness of climate change, has
a Twitter profile that featured updates leading up to the event. Dell
maintains a Twitter profile that advertises short-term (a number of
hours or days) promotional specials on computers and other hardware.
Opinion Journal, an offshoot of the Wall Street Journal, has a Twitter
profile, as does Reuters, which posts new headlines with links to the
full stories.
3) How does it work? After
creating an account, you can personalize your profile page and enter
tweets into a text field. Unless your tweets are protected, they appear
on a “public timeline†page, which displays all public tweets in
reverse chronological order, like a series of “micro-blogs.†Each tweet
identifies the Twitterer, whose screen name links to that person’s
profile page, showing all of her previous tweets and her friends’
tweets. If you are registered, you can add her as a friend, see a list
of her friends, and add any of those people as your friends. Once you
have established at least one friend relationship, your Twitter home
page shows the tweets posted by you and your friends, though you can
still access the public timeline separately. You can also send private
messages to friends or post a direct reply to another tweet.
All
of the Twitter functions are available through SMS. If you provide
Twitter with a cell phone number or IM contact information, you can
“follow†individual users, even if you are not friends with them. By
choosing to follow a user, you will be notified by phone, IM, or both
any time that person posts a new tweet. Twitter integrates with blogs
and other Web pages, providing Flash and JavaScript code options that
allow Web pages to access Twitter updates. Twitter also provides RSS,
which allows news aggregators to subscribe to individual feeds, which
can be one Twitterer’s posts, your friends’ tweets, or the public
timeline.
4) Why is it significant? The
experience of using Twitter has been described as walking into a room
of conversations and looking for a “hook†to decide if and when to jump
in. While some people find the public timeline interesting and collect
hundreds — if not thousands — of friends and followers, many see the
value of Twitter in keeping connected with a select group of colleagues
and acquaintances through a shared space. Tweets offer information
about a person—likes, dislikes, frustrations—that might never make it
into a professional conversation. Some of the information is trivial,
some boring, and some perhaps better kept private, but the sum of all
this information can be getting to know someone quite well, warts and
all.
For colleagues who
don’t live in the same town, Twitter can serve as a “virtual water
cooler†where people talk about work, the weather, sports, or anything
else that comes up. Twitter’s networking component lets you make
connections with your friends’ friends, and this dynamic can lead to
serendipitous professional or personal relationships with other
Twitterers. Twitter creates a new channel of communication, but it also
facilitates a new way of seeing and understanding people: although most
individual tweets say very little, ardent Twitterers say that the magic
comes from following people over time, developing a sense of who they
really are and knowing — at nearly any moment — what they are doing and
how they feel about it.
5) What are the downsides? The
most common criticism of Twitter is that it enables inane interaction.
Tweets that say nothing more than “I’m eating pickles†or “Really tired
today†are not uncommon, and, indeed, the value of such postings to the
casual user is minimal. Moreover, as an asynchronous broadcast service,
there is no guarantee that any individual tweet will be read, let alone
responded to. Twitter can also be a distraction for frequent and
committed users. If you follow Twitterers on your phone or by IM, or if
you find yourself constantly checking the Web site for updates, Twitter
can be a time eater. If you interact with the site through a cell
phone, the SMS charges can accumulate rapidly, and the sheer number of
updates — particularly if you have a large number of friends or friends
who are active users—can be unwieldy.
6) Where is it going? Twitter
publishes an API, and applications are regularly being developed that
build on that platform. Early tools let users add Twitter functionality
to their desktops. Some newer applications add location information to
Twitter data, letting users not only read what people are doing but see
where they are. An application called TwitterCamp lets users display
tweets in large-format displays, such as projectors. Other applications
let users post short audio tweets — an idea that seems to introduce the
notion of “micro-podcasts.†These and other applications built on
Twitter will come and go, with the community of users determining which
ones last and which ones don’t. Facebook has become a place where users
share considerable amounts of information, and the site offers a wide
range of options for restricting how much and what kinds of information
you see. Likewise, as Twitter grows, it will likely add more (and more
detailed) filters to balance the amount of available content.
7) What are the implications for teaching and learning? Much
has been written about the benefits of active learning strategies —
using tools and techniques that engage students in ways other than
simply listening to an instructor and taking notes. In the same way
that clickers facilitate active learning, Twitter, too, could be used
in an academic setting to foster interaction about a given topic.
Metacognition — the practice of thinking about and reflecting on your
learning — has been shown to benefit comprehension and retention. As a
tool for students or professional colleagues to compare thoughts about
a topic, Twitter can be a viable platform for metacognition, forcing
users to be brief and to the point — an important skill in thinking
clearly and communicating effectively. In addition, Twitter can provide
a simple way for attendees at a conference to share thoughts about
particular sessions and activities with others at the event and those
unable to attend.
Jaz4UJul 10th 05:30 The next time you visit, try different searches, i.e., #shares. You will be surprised as the number of live hits for keywords that are not showing in trends. ~ good post, leaving a top :)
Jul 10th 05:30
Feb 15th 22:26
