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Evan Williams and Biz Stone of Twitter Robyn Twomey for TIME ENLARGE + Print Reprints Email Twitter Linkedin Buzz up! (44) Facebook MORE... Add to my: del.icio.us Technorati reddit Google Bookmarks Mixx StumbleUpon Blog this on: TypePad LiveJournal Blogger MySpace The one thing you can say for certain about Twitter is that it makes a terrible first impression. You hear about this new service that lets you send 140-character updates to your "followers," and you think, Why does the world need this, exactly? It's not as if we were all sitting around four years ago scratching our heads and saying, "If only there were a technology that would allow me to send a message to my 50 friends, alerting them in real time about my choice of breakfast cereal." Related Audio Host Katherine Lanpher talks with TIME's Just Fox on stocks vs. bonds and Barbara Kiviat about the housing market's new movement Download | Subscribe Specials The World of Twitter Specials Top 10 Celebrity Twitter Feeds Specials 10 Ways Twitter Will Change American Business Stories The TIME 100: The Twitter Guys by Ashton Kutcher More Related The TIME 100: The Twitter Guys by Ashton Kutcher The TIME 100: The Twitter Guys by Ashton Kutcher The Future of Twitter I, too, was skeptical at first. I had met Evan Williams, Twitter's co-creator, a couple of times in the dotcom '90s when he was launching Blogger.com. Back then, what people worried about was the threat that blogging posed to our attention span, with telegraphic, two-paragraph blog posts replacing long-format articles and books. With Twitter, Williams w

"Injecting Twitter into that conversation fundamentally changed the rules of engagement. It added a second layer of discussion and brought a wider audience into what would have been a private exchange. And it gave the event an afterlife on the Web. Yes, it was built entirely out of 140-character messages, but the sum total of those tweets added up to something truly substantive, like a suspension bridge made of pebbles."

Those who have panicked that their Twitter followers have dropped - don't be paranoid! The twitter spammers have again taken the axe. Twitter self corrects about every 90 days and you'll get used to it. The fact is that Twitter is for meaningful, authentic communication - albeit short and if you do that, it can be a fun, and useful part of your personal learning network. It is unique to you and how you want to do it! Remember that it is not about the followers although you'll have people direct message you that you can somehow buy 200 or even 500 followers a day -- like that will enrich your life! Come on -- twitter is great and it is not about how many people follow YOU anyway - if you get tied up in that too much then you're probably really there for just selfish reasons anyway. Enjoy and have fun!

"Because social-networking tools are forums for personalized, socially focused conversations, the communities that spring from these tools are person/people-centered. As Porter explained, this person/people-centeredness results in the value of participation being opaque for anyone who is not participating. To address this problem, we made sure that students who chose not to participate (because the value of participation is opaque for them) had access to our tweets by incorporating an RSS feed-like Twitter widget in our LMS. (See Figure 5.) Many widgets like these can be found online, although we should note that this particular widget has limitations. As seen in the example in Figure 5, the widget only displays Joni's posts, not the back-and-forth exchanges between her and members of her network. Students might incorrectly assume that the interaction is one-sided and less than dynamic. Besides keeping students apprised of the resources we shared via Twitter, however, this widget allowed them to vicariously discover Twitter's value. Some students later chose to join us in Twitter because they had a better understanding of what they were getting into because its value was less opaque. Ultimately, we found that Twitter helped us achieve our student-engagement objective, but we also quickly discovered that students' Twitter participation led to other notable instructional outcomes."

Excellent article about the research from several researchers about Tweets that are compelling and those that are turn-offs. This and the original research are both great reads. I thought it funny that people particularly hate foursquare check ins mentioned through Twitter, so unlink that account or lose followers! "One piece of advice: Nix the "sandwich tweets." People do not care what you are eating for lunch. (Specifically: "Sorry, but I don't care what people are eating," "too much personal info," "He moans about this ALL THE TIME. Seriously.") Twitter, as a communications platform, has evolved beyond nascent Twttr's charmingly mundane updates ("cleaning my apartment"; "hungry") and into something more crowd-conscious and curatorial. Though Twitter won't necessarily replace traditional news, it increasingly functions as a real-time newswire, disseminating and amplifying information gathered from the world and the web.

Leading Twitter Community Manager! Better Manage Your Twitter Relationships Focus on Your Influencers, supporters & potential customers. Stress-Free Social Productivity: Commun.it analyzes relationships and helps you engage with your top members.

[Notules, Chroniques vagabondes] Comment expliquer le succès phénoménal de Twitter ? "La semaine dernière, en évoquant Europeana, nous avons parlé des portails à très grande échelle. Aujourd'hui, je voudrais discuter l'évolution actuelle des Microformats, surtout celle représentée par le service Twitter. Twitter, c'est l'équivalent d'un SMS sur le web. Les attentats de Bombay ont démontré encore une fois l'utilité et l'importance de la plateforme (des blogueurs ont été les premiers à reporter les attentats et à les suivre en direct): Twitter une communication quasi-instantannée, une multiplicité de voix et de perspectives et une large diversité de contenu. Tel qu'il semble évoluer en ce moment, le service est en train de modifier la culture du réseau en légitimant une pratique ancrée dans la liberté de la contrainte: bavardage et superflu sont éliminés au profit de l'exactitude et de la promptitude" (...)

Tips for using twitter in education

[academhack] "I must admit that when I first heard about Twitter I thought it represented the apex of what concerns me about internet technology: solipsism and sound-bite communication. While I obviously spend a great deal of time online and thinking about the potential of these new networked digital communication structures, I also worry about the way that they too easily lead to increasingly short space and time for conversation, cutting off nuance and conversation, and what is often worse how these conversations often reduce to self-centered statements. When I first heard about Twitter I thought, this was the example par excellence of these fears, so for many months I did not investigate it at all. Then I read an article by Clive Thompson at Wired. Clive's article convinced me that perhaps it was worth giving Twitter a try. At this point I have to say, I am so glad that I did. Although I am still beginning to wrap my head around all of its varied uses-I think for the most part Twitter users themselves are still figuring this out-I have been using it for over six months now and come up with some academic uses." (...)

Twitter is a big place. A real big place. When you first join, it can be a little overwhelming. Who do you follow? How do you find other twitters with similar interests? FlockUp is here to help you answer these questions. Here, you can: * Create a flock. Examples include: - A topic of interest: ruby - An event: webinno20 - A location: boston * Add 'flockers' to a flock. This just means adding a twitter user to a 'flock'.

As the recession looms on, more and more people are turning to social media and blogs to look for jobs. Jamie Varon (@jamievaron) has generated buzz in the Twitter community with her new website called Twitter Should Hire Me, where she blogs candidly about her attempts to get a job at Twitter. In this interview, she shares her tips on how to use social media to land the job of your dreams, even in a recession.

Twitter has become an incredible tool not just for communication, but for improving your life. Anyone can use it to expand their social circle, promote their side business, keep their coursework organized, and more. Whether you want to achieve your Twitter goals, or just use it as a tool to achieve others, these tools will help you get there.

Manage and anylyze your Twitter Community

Studious paper on twitter

Studious paper on twitter

Author Steven Johnson's view on Twitter, particularly how the service is evolving thanks to the community (c/o MKP). BTW: This is the print version.

While offering only 3 concrete pointers for collaboration, the article does paint a positive future for twitter.