All ATwitter Over Twitter
Everyone seems to be tweeting on Twitter. Last month Talk of the Nation devoted a segment to Twitter, explaining its purpose and inviting listeners to tweet with them. EDUCAUSE describes Twitter as “part blog, part social networking site, and part IM tool.” The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative has a Twitter primer in its “7 Things You Should Know” series.
Twitter was created in March 2006 with the purpose of answering the question “What are you doing?” “Followers” track and communicate with those they follow. Twitter is unique in limiting each tweet (aka post) to 140 characters so “conversations” are typically frequent and short. I follow and am followed by about a dozen folks, both friends and colleagues. I have to admit that my tweets are pretty prosaic as are most of my followers’ tweets, if they tweet at all. There are some exceptions — mostly the faculty I follow who use Twitter with students and colleagues. As more formal groups, such as Talk of the Nation, use Twitter as a venue to engage listeners/readers in conversations I expect the general level of discourse will be elevated.
I participate in several social networking sites, and I mostly post and read posts about the ordinary. The network I find most engaging is Goodreads where participants share reviews of books they’ve read. I’ve got a couple dozen Goodread friends; I look forward to their updates and I enjoy posting my own reviews.
Social Networking is becoming prevalent and there are more sites than ever before — both general and interest-specific. There are so many new opportunities to connect with others, share interests, and participate in online communities. Their role in higher education remains to be seen, so stay connected. Meanwhile, I’m off to tweet about this latest blog posting.
Thought-provoking post, Paula. Twitter is a strange critter, a nearly “pure” form of Web 2.0 that’s not easy to get a handle on. Blogging made sense to me *much* faster than Twitter.
The two most interesting pieces I’ve read on Twitter talk about how it’s a thin “presence stream” that helps folks in a social network keep at least minimally up to date with each other so that there’s not so much catching up to do when they next meet face-to-face (or, I guess, when they next have a long telephone conversation). One of the articles talked about Twitter as a kind of “Frank Capra movie,” which struck me as both off-the-wall and strangely perceptive. Given what we are learning about “social intelligence” and the value of that kind of personal contact, I’m convinced there are massive teaching-and-learning opportunities there.
I’ve also found it very useful for just-in-time tech support, as it was the day I tweeted and asked if anyone knew an easy way to stream video live over the Internet. In five minutes, three folks tweeted back recommending uStream.tv–and a good final projects presentation became great because of all the participation that occurred over the uStream webcast.
It’s all down to the network,in my experience: Twitter and all these other Web 2.0 services enable (empower?) certain kinds of network effects, but they don’t create the network all by themselves. Some assembly required!
Comment by Gardner Campbell — September 22, 2008 @ 11:05 am