Group items tagged

This is a great article about twitter. And I really like the idea that it is a LOT about what we can DO with twitter data that makes it so compelling (all those great apps out there). "Websites that once saw their traffic dominated by Google search queries are seeing a growing number of new visitors coming from "passed links" at social networks like Twitter and Facebook. This is what the naysayers fail to understand: it's just as easy to use Twitter to spread the word about a brilliant 10,000-word New Yorker article as it is to spread the word about your Lucky Charms habit. Put those three elements together - social networks, live searching and link-sharing - and you have a cocktail that poses what may amount to the most interesting alternative to Google's near monopoly in searching."

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."

Go beyond the standard Twitter question "What are you doing?" to make your tweets more interesting. Go beyond status updates. Get creative and treat Twitter as a 140-character canvas!

The best way to deal with too many tweets. Hide what you don't want to see so you can focus on what matters. And it works directly on Twitter.com.

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.

"These little bits of information" are complementary to what journalists do. Twitter is working on relevancy and heping people find what is more relevant to them, says Williams, but sees a role for journalists in helping audiences sifting the signal from the noise. He talks about journalists' role as curating the messages on Twitter, with the Huffington Post being a leader in this area. But Williams also says the company wants to build more trust and authenticity into Twitter. The company is working on reputation systems, though this is still at its nascent phase.

RT @AngelaMaiers: 13 Alternative Search Engines That Finds What Google Can't

How will this start changing the game? Josh Korr of Publishing 2.0 reports that about a week ago, four journalists from Washington state began reporting a major local story in collaboration with each other on Twitter. Writes Korr:Those four journalists weren't in the same newsroom. In fact, they all work for different media companies. And here's the best part: Some of them have never even met in person.Could journalists have discovered the same thing we have also been exploring collectively online? That collaboration strengthens a network and draws more readers, not less. I also agree with Korr that news organizations need to start investing in smart journalists who get the power of cooperation. To summarize what these fine professionals did: Acted in real time and focused on the reporting of the events - in line with the Twitter culture of immediacy as well as a sense of urgency for their readers at the respective mastheads Collaborated with each other to cover the story as it was unfolding instead of worrying about the credit - imagine the first cross-news organization team that wins a Pulitzer, now wouldn't that be news? Provided higher quality news than just one person doing the reporting. There was some skepticism in the comments to Korr's post. Maybe this is not the first time journalists network for a news story. This collaboration so open on Twitter seems quite novel to me.I know some of my readers are journalists or are studying journalism. What possibilities do you see...

One guys idea of the Why's of using Twitter.

The Twitter Survival Guide and What Twitter Application is Right For You?

Ok, so what is Twitter and why should you care?  First, let's start with what it isn't.  Twitter is *not* about micro-blogging.  Yes, it is described this way - yes even by it's founders.  But they have also admittedly publicly that much of the innovation on Twitter has happened in the user base - the convention for retweets (RT), for example, came from the user base.  For those of you who are new, RT is just a way to a convention for sharing a message from someone you follow to your own followers.  It's sort of citation plus recommendation plus message all wrapped in a little two letter acronym.

Explains what today's (8/6/2009) "denial-of-service" is all about, and what it means for security of users in the web 2.0 arena (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

Twups is a twitter aggregator, pulling the most popular twitter topics into one place, so you can keep up to date on what is going on in the world, via twitter. We also make it super easy to reply directly to a tweet, or even retweet something you find on Twups directly from your Twitter account. All topics can be found via category or alphabetically, you can also do a quick search. You can also suggest topics via our

"What are the people of the NY Times saying on Twitter today?"

I am floored to find 617 lesson plans using Twitter on the TES site. Some talk about social networks and society, advertising, etc. and others are recommendations for teachers, however, Twitter is increasingly becoming PART Of lessons and what we do. I think that eventually we'll have to make friends with social media in education just as we did with email.

The new Twitter iOS app and Android app works on the discover feature and search. Discover is supposed to show you more about what retweets you've gotten,etc. I've found it easier to see this information in hootsuite and for scheduling I use buffer. Twitter is amazing, but I rarely go to the site itself on my phone or computer. I have a feeling this is strategic for Twitter as they look to monetize. Update and check it out.