Tech T.I.P. 5/5/2011

Can We Tweet?
by Denise Barrett Olson


A tweet is a short text message posted to one of the most versatile social networks, Twitter. At first glance Twitter appears to be one step up from a cell phone’s text messaging system, but on further inspection you will find that Twitter is more - much more. Today I want to show you how we Rabbits can put it to good use.

Twitter basics are pretty basic. Once you create a free account and set up your profile, you start looking for other interesting tweeps (Twitter people) to follow. When you follow someone, you’ll receive copies of their tweets (messages) in your timeline. When you post your own tweets, anyone following you will see them.

You don’t need permission to follow someone. If they look like someone interesting you click the Follow button. That’s it. If they turn out to be not so interesting after all, click Unfollow.

Tweets can’t be more than 140 characters long, however they can include links to web sites, blog posts, photos, videos and more. In the examples you see here, most of them include a link in the message. When you click on a tweet, a panel opens to the right giving you more information about that tweet.

There are several simple features that add a tremendous amount of functionality to these 140 characters. Let’s look at them and how they can be used.

You may have noticed the at sign (@) used in the tweets above. The at sign is used to identify a username. For example, my Twitter username is moultriecreek and when someone wants to write about something I did or said, they will add the at sign in front of my username (example: @moultriecreek). Twitter will automatically make that reference into a link to my Twitter profile page. You can click on one of these references to learn more about the person or company being discussed. In the expanded pane above, that’s already done for you.

Yes, companies can have Twitter accounts. My sample timeline shows several businesses and organizations. It’s a quick, easy and cheap way to keep people informed about your company or organization. Local tv and radio stations use Twitter to post weather and traffic alerts. Restaurants and markets announce daily specials. The guy who runs the very low-tech fresh market in my neighborhood keeps us updated on new arrivals - from his cell phone.

Since tweets are only text, they can be sent from any cell phone with text messaging capabilities. This can be very handy - especially in emergency situations. When a disaster happens, the phone systems are quickly overwhelmed, but you can often get a text message through. And, one message sent to Twitter tells everyone who’s following you that you are okay. No, you would not want to post all your comings and goings to Twitter, but it sure can help in times of disaster.

Another useful Twitter tool is the hashtag. A hashtag is a word or acronym preceded by a hash mark (#) and is used to collect tweets related to a specific topic. You’ll find #genealogy used frequently and #GYRabbits identifies a Rabbit-related tweet. To collect all the conversation around a hashtag, use Twitter’s search function to find them. Just type your hashtag into the search bar at the top of the browser’s window to display the results. If this is a conversation you want follow, click the Save this search button to add it to your personal search list. They’re always available from the Search drop-down menu at the top of your timeline.

One last Twitter feature - the list. This allows you to organize the people you’re following into groups. You might have a list for family and friends, another for the genealogy people you follow and one for local news. After creating your lists, choose the one you want to view from the List drop-down menu and you’ll only see tweets from the people on that list.

Now that I’ve described some of the things that make Twitter so handy, it’s time to ask for your help. Twitter has even more advantages for a group - such as the GYRabbits. There are a growing number of web-based platforms and apps that take advantage of Twitter’s deceptively simple platform to create some truly fascinating things. And, since I think the GYRabbits are pretty darn fascinating, I’d like to see us get some of the attention we deserve.

Here you see a delightful online newspaper made up of blog posts that have been announced on Twitter by various genealogy societies and genealogists. I have created a Twitter list of these groups and used it to create this newspaper. The newspaper app looks at the tweets posted by the people in my list and follows their links back to the blog posts or news articles they’ve tweeted about. The information from those posts is pulled into the paper to build today’s edition. Click on any article title to view the entire article at its originating site. Tomorrow, this little paper will do the same thing all over again. Don’t worry though, the paper also maintains its own archives so if you miss a day you can catch up tomorrow.

Although Twitter looks quite simple to us, there are some truly amazing things happening behind the scenes. At the top of that list is the programming interface that allows applications like paper.li to build beautiful ways to share custom collections of tweets. This app can create a daily or weekly paper based on a Twitter account, a list or even a hashtag.

I would very much love to see all the GYRabbits together in one beautiful package like this. We can make it happen with paper.li, but first we need three things - from you. First, we need all our Rabbits using Twitter and second, we need you all “announcing” each GYRabbit article with a tweet. Both are very simple processes. It will only take a minute to sign up for a free Twitter account. Second, you will need to set up your blog to announce each post. There is another free online app called Twitter Feed that will do this for you - no matter which blogging platform you’re using. Set up a Twitter Feed account, enter your feed info for your blog, then connect it to your Twitter account. That’s it! Now, every time you post an article on your GYRabbit site, it will be announced on Twitter with a link back to your post. Last, please send a tweet to @moultriecreek with the #GYRabbits hashtag so I can add you to our Twitter list.

Once the GYRabbits newspaper goes live, we’ll announce it on Twitter because, in addition to having a gorgeous showcase for our Rabbits, we also have a way to easily connect with each other. I look forward to receiving your tweets!