Twitter is often referred to as a ‘micro-blogging’ online platform. This term emerged at a time when blogs had reached a significant density in the new online media ecology. Along with the updated entries, in reverse chronology with links, images, video and audio embedding, Twitter can be used for more than a micro-blogging. With Twitter individuals can build a huge subscriber audience as well as tap into streams of information from specifically identifiable sources.
Twitter is a valuable tool for –
* Presenting your own research, activities, publishing, ideas and teaching.
* Broadcasting events in summaries, links, media, documents and citations.
* Communicating in dialogue, argument an discussion.
* Creating a back channel at events for discussion and dialogue.
* Providing a record as an archive of Tweets.
One first signs up for an account
Beginning with Twitter is usually about watching and compiling a Following list. It is important to get passed the noise of Twitter, made up of millions of people broadcasting the tiny details of their lives. For Twitter to be used as a professional tool is it necessary to locate the area or field in which you work. For myself I follow a group of 500+ people working in digital culture, technology, language and literature, critical theory related to the mediation of language and culture, virtual history and museums, social and political activism, pedagogy, globalization, sound studies, place studies, urban studies, authorship and current affairs (the final one being the most personal).
It takes time to build up an interesting feed on Twitter. Unless you are already well known it takes even longer to build up an audience for your own feed. I have found that tweeting events builds a following, so be active and share. Posting links is a standard for me, but I believe that engaging in dialogue with others is perhaps a better way of building a following. However I am not sure that popularity is so important. I see Twitter as a tool that has enormous potential for academics, researchers and other professionals. In the Books and PDFs section of this toolkit the PDF “How to Present with Twitter and Other Backchannels” is a useful guide to using Twitter in conjunction with events. Tagging is central to how Twitter operates as a feed. By adding a short word or phrase with # at the front of it (e.g. #DigitalHumanities) others can call it up it and all other entries that contain it by clicking on it.
Tools to Use in Conjunction with Twitter
Tweetdeck is a way of organizing your content and activities from Twitter. It organizes your own tweets, those of the group you follow, it pulls up any mentions of your username on Twitter.
Hoot Suit is a ‘social media dashboard’ which means like Tweetdeck you can manage the various streams associated not only with Twitter, but with your other social media tools. You have to pay for Hoot Suit if you want the added effectiveness of things like tracking conversations or creating teams of users.
Visible Tweets is a tool for visualizing frequency of tags or keywords on Twitter. It makes a pretty interface that can be effective in presentations, making slides or running a stream as a backchannel at events.
Storify is a very useful tool that allows you archive unlimited tweets around a hashtag. You can then download or embed the archive.
Twitalyzer is for analyzing relative influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, velocity, clout, and other useful measures of success in social media.
I hope this brief introduction to Twitter has been useful.
Transmedial Reality 