To Tweet, or not to Tweet

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To Tweet, or not to Tweet?
Harry E. Pence pencehe_at_oneonta.edu
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Twitter is the latest in a series of new social
media software tools.

• It once asked, What Am I Doing
  Now? Now it asks,
  'What's happening?

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Henry Jenkins, . . . focus on emerging cultural
practices rather than emerging technologies.

• Twitter is constantly being repurposed by its
  users. Most people dont use it to ask, What
  are you doing now?
• Many basic components of Twitter, including
  hashtags, _at_ for a username, repeat Tweets, and
  for a stock, have been user created.

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My Personal Social Systems
Google Docs
YouTube
Diigo
RSS
Delicious
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Twitter is a Major Distribution Platform.
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Many of the top 100 Twitter users are Celebrities.

• This partially explains why there is so much
  Twitter Buzz.

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Many Businesses are using Twitter.
Experts say the real potential for Twitter is for
sales, coupons, or special offers.
Share Breaking News 71.9
Extending a personal face to consumers. 63.7
Percent Using
Keeping in touch 55.1
Consumer Feedback 48.6
Offering Products 20.0
http//tinyurl.com/yhnuekn
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Teen agers are not the main users.

• Only about 15 of US Internet users use Twitter
  at present.

http//tinyurl.com/y8c4une
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Twitter has become a news source. For example,
CNN used it for reports about the Iranian election
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Ideally, Twitter should create a community (or
network) of practice.

• Is this how college professors actually use
  Twitter?

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How do college teachers actually use Twitter?

• Based on 196 responses.

http//tinyurl.com/lzhesh
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The key to making Twitter useful is choosing
carefully who you follow.

• Dont be afraid to block people who arent
  interesting to you.
• Twitter has brief profiles, so people searches
  are not very good.
• There are several directories, like
  www.twellow.com, www.wefollow.com/ or
  www.tribes.com, that allow you to search for
  people with specific interests. For example, I
  like wefollow best and it lists 900 librarians.

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One of the recent additions to Twitter is lists.

• Listorious (http//listorious.com) has hundreds
  of lists.

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How can you make the most effective use of
Twitter?

• Twitter is like standing in front of a fire hose
  of information.
• How does one organize the flow?
• There are several useful programs, including
  www.tweetdeck.com, Seesmic or Twhirl

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Tweetdeck organizes information into columns.
To create a new column, click on the search
button.
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This will create a new column

• Here I am using a hashtag (i.e. hhlib) to follow
  the comments at a meeting about handheld
  librarians.

Notice the retweets (RT).
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Within a column I can sort for URLs.

• Click on the button with the cloud and filter the
  column with http. You will only get comments
  that include web sites.

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You can also search for just a word, like Oneonta.

• TokyoBlaque writes about being accepted to
  Oneonta.
• Several local businesses list job openings.
• Several SUNY Oneonta students comment, pro and
  con, on the college.

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It is also possible to link your twitter and
FaceBook accounts.

• Click on the FaceBook button, then establish a
  link between the two social nets.

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The new version of TweetDeck supports Lists, maps
for geo-tagged messages, and LinkedIn streams. 
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How does Twitter Differ from FaceBook? (based on
danah boyd http//tinyurl.com/yk23v56)

• danah boyd says that the two sites are based on
  different conversational practices. FaceBook is
  about connecting to those you know Twitter is
  about self-representation.
• FaceBook is based on reciprocity I can follow
  you on Twitter without your specific permission
  (although you can block me.)
• Many use Twitter to access the latest thinking by
  the experts in their field.

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Several ways are available to track trending
topics on Twitter.

• I think www.trendsmap.com is one of the best.
• Click on a hashtag to go to the current tweets.

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Twitter and education
Is this classroom design already obsolescent?
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Hall and Fisher (USC) have students (called
Google Jockeys) supplement the lecture.
Twitter back chat at conferences is becoming
routine.
back channel chat
collaborative text editor
google search
Sometimes three screens are used, text edits, a
back chat, and Google Jockey.
Photo from Larry Gertz http//tinyurl.com/l5ayga
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You can often guess the hashtag for a
conferences, i.e. activate09.

• Some think a screen setup like this is asking for
  disaster! See http//tinyurl.com/l6bagc
• But also see http// tinyurl.com/yh5gzv4

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Beware of Twitterbellion

• Recently a speaker at HighEdWeb 2009 Open.
  Connected learned the power of Twitter the hard
  way 500 tweets in one hour.
• Selected Tweets from http//tinyurl.com/yakrz9r
• Gold font on gray backgound w/ 1990 drop shadow
  makes babies cry. Should we stage intervention
• Videos are not automatically good
• OH its always relevant when you use popular hip
  hop songs from 5 years ago
• KAZAA OMG. how old is this video? Kazaa has been
  dead for years
• Can anyone hear this guy? Or read his slides?

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How does one tame the tweets during a
presentation?

• The Blog, Pistachio, has some excellent
  suggestions http//tinyurl.com/yzpgeke

You can try to focus the Tweets
http//tinyurl.com/yecmh86
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Some organizers are trying to protect speakers
from nasty Tweets by

• Posting a list of good practices for Tweets,
• Monitoring the back channel, or
• Publicly identifying the hecklers.
• It isnt clear yet what might work best.

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Could tweckling happen in a college classroom?

• Definitely! How would we respond?

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Why is Twitter so popular?

• The Times says it is a modern form of narrative.

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according to Gerd Leonhard

• Any Software that works on a cell phone has an
  advantage.

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Twitter is a metaphor for information flow.

• danah boyd says that Twitter makes you feel as
  though you were living inside the information
  stream adding to it, consuming it, redirecting
  it.

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What's emerging is not just the diffusion of
creativity, but the need for improved information
brokers.

• Twitter allows users to selectively grab the
  information they want and stay peripherally aware
  without feeling overwhelmed.

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Are we moving towards convergence or divergence?

• For some time experts have been predicting that
  we are moving towards a convergence of internet
  systems.

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To help visualize the web connections, Brian
Solis and Jesse Thomas created what they called
the Conversation Prism.
Conversation Prism

• Does this look like convergence?

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Instead of the convergence that was promised, the
communications world seems to be becoming more
fragmented and confusing.
No New Technologies!

• The number of new programs with new capabilities
  continues to grow rapidly.
• Many people feel they are exceeding the amount of
  new information that they can absorb, and so
  refuse to add new technologies.

I think the most important change is that social
networks are creating a new form of web search.
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How is social search different from Google search?

• Google search tells you what was happening then
  social search tells you what is happening now!
• Google search tells you what you knew you needed
  to know social search tells you what you didnt
  know you needed to know.
• How does social search relate to traditional web
  search?

Blogs
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Everything seems to be becoming connected, but
the connections are not centralized.

• Are we actually moving towards a decentralized
  divergence where everything is connected, but
  there is no real hub?

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Traditional Search
RSS
Bing
Google
Friend Feed?
Google News
Blogs
Twitter
FaceBook
Technorati
Linkedin
Social Search
Delicious
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How does a user systematically search this mess?

• And it just keeps getting more and more
  complicated!

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Are we creating a web within a web?

• What is going to evolve out of this morass of
  connections?
• And how will it change the way that we search for
  information?

No. 9 Piet Modrian
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Is Google Becoming a Social Media
Company?http// searchenginewatch.com/3635188

• Google SearchWiki- lets you annotate your search
  and Google Sidewiki lets you annotate individual
  web pages (like Diigo?)
• Google Cloudboard improved cut paste?
• Google Hot Trends is like Twitters trending
  topics
• Google has added a side panel with nine new
  search options to compete with Twitter
  (http//mashable.com/2009/10/01/google-search-opti
  ons/) These include filtering your search to
  past hour, specific date range, visited pages,
  not yet visited, books, blogs and news.
• And then there is the wave!

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Twitter is only the latest thing, not the
ultimate thing.
We are in an era when one big thing quickly
follows another.
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The next big thing may already be here, Google
Wave.

• This may be Googles ultimate challenge to social
  sites, like Twitter and FaceBook.
• Wave is a combination of discussion board, wiki,
  Twitter, texting, and e-mail if we were
  reinventing it today.
• Many educators believe that real learning only
  occurs when students are in dialogue with someone
  else. Wave may well be a game changer for
  education.

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Just think if Twitter had been around in 1776.
Tweet
Thank you for listening.