Group items tagged

"To those who Twitter, the reporter who investigates a story before offering it to the public must also seem tediously ruminant. On Twitter, the notes become the story, devoid of even five minutes of reflection on the writer's way to the computer. I can see that there are times -an airplane landing in the Hudson, a presidential election in Iran-when this type of impromptu journalism becomes a necessity, and an exciting one at that. Luckily, reporters still exist to make sense of information bytes and expand upon them for readers-but for how much longer?"

A recent analysis of Twitter content found that local governments in Virginia are mainly ignoring the popular microblogging website. The research study showed that only 17% of county, city and town governments had Twitter accounts. Tweets averaged at around one per day, and only five of the accounts had more than 1000 followers.

Basic guide to Twitter, why you'd want to use it, how to use it, etc. Created for businesses so there's case studies and other resources for business.

Short Telegraph write-up on ghostwriters for Twitter accounts

Interesting discussion of the differences between Facebook and Twitter, especially among 18-24 group.

Ok, this video is even funnier. It pretty much encapsulates all the ridiculous things about Twitter.

Wall Street Journal's take on the #cnnfail event.

"When thousands of Iranian citizens flooded the streets to protest the controversial results of last Friday's presidential election, news viewers in the U.S. rushed to Twitter to protest what they saw as a lack of coverage of Iran on CNN."

Make sure you don't get left behind by incorporating some of these educational and fun ways that Twitter can be used in the college classroom.

"Sam Bee says Twitter has become such a big deal because it's awesome and our rotting corpses are grabbing for its glimmer."

Short Mashable list of ways to use Twitter for freebies

"Study finds political parties use Twitter differently, but says Democrats' messages are more honest.

"Researchers at Yahoo analyzed tweets after the Chilean earthquake earlier this year and found evidence that the Twitter community works like a "collaborative filter," questioning reports that turn out to be fake and confirming those that are true."

One of many good reactions to Gladwell's essay on Twitter, social media and political action. (Link to Gladwell essay is inside this post.)

How exactly does someone develop into a leader on Twitter?

Great short blog post from my old '2 sort' folder that gives the authors answer to "why you should use Twitter." From 2009, but I think it still holds up well.

Scholars, advertisers and political activists see massive online social networks as a representation of social interactions that can be used to study the propagation of ideas, social bond dynamics and viral marketing, among others. But the linked structures of social networks do not reveal actual interactions among people. Scarcity of attention and the daily rhythms of life and work makes people default to interacting with those few that matter and that reciprocate their attention. A study of social interactions within Twitter reveals that the driver of usage is a sparse and hidden network of connections underlying the "declared" set of friends and followers.

"Someone recently asked me, 'If McCluhan is right and the medium is the message, what is the message of Twitter?" My response: "Here It Is and Here I Am.'"

"Does the label Twitter Revolution, which has been slapped on the two most recent events, oversell the technology?"

"CoTweet allows multiple people to communicate through corporate Twitter accounts and stay in sync while doing so. With CoTweet, you can: * Engage people throughout your company - Share the job of being on duty. Tap the collective wisdom of people across functional areas like marketing, PR and customer service. Assign tasks and track follow-ups. * Focus on the conversations that matter - Know when you need to jump in. Track your exchanges through simple case management. Schedule updates to make company announcements. * Keep your brand human - Automatically include signatures in your updates to identify who's talking and keep conversations personal."

Birmingham City University "is to offer a master's degree teaching students about social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Bebo."