Twitter has stirred up a lot of chatter. As with most Internet trends, it's considered by many to be a waste of time, while others believe it is revolutionizing communication. And like most Internet trends, it's both. The decision by the Library of Congress to archive all public Tweets shows just how important Twitter has become as a form of writing.
(For more on the Library of Congress decision, you can read articles here and here and here, or go to the Library of Congress's own Twitter page).
What is Twitter, exactly?
Twitter is a site that helps people communicate through brief, frequent updates, called "tweets," of 140 characters or fewer. Twitter can be updated online or from your mobile phone. According to the Twitter About page, "[t]he 140 character limit originated so tweets could be sent as mobile text messages which have a limit of 160 characters. Minus 20 characters for author attribution, that gives users just enough room." The action of posting a tweet is called "tweeting." [Yes, "tweet" has joined the list of Internet terms that serve as both nouns and verbs (also on the list: Google, Facebook, friend). As Calvin and Hobbes would say, "verbing weirds language."]
Twitter actually has its own F.A.Q. page with simple, helpful explanations for how to use the service.
A lot of Twitter's features were developed by users, so Twitter is constantly evolving to best meet users' needs.
Some people get addicted to Twitter, tweeting constantly, unwilling to be separated from a computer or phone for an instant.
For a funny look at Twitter addicts, see this video:
What do people Tweet about?
Anything! Tweets range from the mundane (brushing one's teeth) to the monumental (winning an election). Twitter simply reasons that people like to share. And they're right. Teenagers in particular love to chat and share with each other.
How is Twitter different from texting?
When used to full effect, Twitter is public, reaching many people (thousands, if you're famous). Text messages go out to one friend or, at most, a few friends, but Tweets are put up on the Internet for everyone to see. However, some people do change their Twitter privacy settings so that only friends can see their Tweets, so it's more like a Facebook status update. Some people even make their Twitter accounts private, like really concise diaries. Even if you have a private account, you can still used Twitter to follow others' Tweets. Lots of people love to follow famous people on Twitter--it's like getting texts from your favorite author or actor! While Tweets can be sent from your cell phone, in a text message, you can also post them from your computer.
So Tweets are usually more public than text messages, though they can be sent via text message and adhere to text message length. And you can use Twitter to follow famous people, something you can't do by text-messaging.
How are Tweets different from Facebook status updates?
This one's tricky, because there are Twitter applications on Facebook connecting the two sites. There are even tools enabling you to set your Tweets as your Facebook status. Tweets and status updates often contain similar information--what the writer is thinking or feeling, fun pictures or links that she finds. But, once again, Tweets can reach a wider audience. Facebook status updates only reach your friends, while anyone can see your Tweets (though of course more selective privacy settings can change this).
Apparently, the Library of Congress cares about Twitter, but why should we?
A good question. The majority of tweets, especially those made by teenagers, seem to be inane, mundane, and pointless. But then you have people like President Obama on Twitter, and knowing what he's up to is informative and useful and...just plain cool, honestly. You can use Twitter to follow your friends' daily shenanigans, and you can use Twitter to follow famous people. You can create custom lists to filter out the more vapid tweets and get straight to the interesting or monumental updates.
Twitter has already been used in schools to get student feedback and comments.
During emergencies, Twitter is also an effective way to communicate quickly.
For some excellent articles on why people use Twitter, read "Twitter isn't stupid. People are." and Margaret Atwood's "How I learned to love Twitter." You can also hear from some early Twitter adopters in this BBC article, "The Tweet Elite."
Twitter Basics
Tweet – a Twitter post, (“Did you read Obama’s newest Tweet?”) or the act of posting to Twitter (“I Tweeted her about it.”) Capitalization optional. Your newest tweets show up at the top of the page, with tweets getting older the farther down the page you go (this can be confusing at first for people used to a top-to-bottom = oldest-to-newest chronology).
verified accounts - The Internet is rife with people pretending to be people they're not (usually it's normal people pretending to be celebrities). Twitter helps you know which accounts are legitimate by verifying the accounts of well-known figures. That's how you can be sure the Leonard Nimoy you're following is the real Leonard Nimoy.
@ - This sign, used before someone's username, "tags" them in a tweet, serving as a way of mentioning or addressing them. For example, if Achilles had a Twitter account, he might tweet "@Agamemnon Fine! Then I'm not fighting. Good luck beating the Trojans without me, jerks."
RT - stands for Retweet. If your tweet has RT at the beginning, it means you didn't write the original tweet; you're just reposting someone else's tweet that you thought was noteworthy. Sometimes, tweets are retweeted multiple times, so you see the letters "RT" repeated.
# - On Twitter, # signs are known as hashtags. By putting a # sign before a word, you turn that word into a tag, much like you would on a blog. That way, other people can search for tweets with specific tags, like #haiku or #haiti. Sometimes people use hashtags as a way of punctuating a joke, like "kwmurphy: To hell with @donttrythis, I'm trying it at home. #LastTweets"
following - When you "follow" someone on Twitter, their updates will show up on your Twitter home page so you can keep track of what they're doing. Naturally, famous people have thousands of followers, while your average person only has a few.
fail whale - When the site gets too busy, or "over capacity," an image of a whale appears and advises you to return to the site later.
twitterature - Works of literature "distilled" into Twitter posts. This may sound blasphemous to literature teachers, but if done right, it can help students with summarizing and determining main ideas. A skillful Twitter writer could create funny summaries, like the Book-a-Minute series, or even create original fiction through the use of Twitter.
twittersphere - A term used to encompass all of Twitter--its site, its users, its essence. Similar to how "blogosphere" refers to all blogging.
People on Twitter You Might Know (or Want to Know):
Margaret Atwood, writer
Stephen Colbert, host of "The Colbert Report"
J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books
Roger Ebert, film critic
Neil Gaiman, author of many award-winning works
Mythbusters, the Discovery Channel show making science fun and full of explosions
Keith Olbermann, MSNBC anchor
Ivy Bean, a 104-year-old British woman
Leonard Nimoy, actor
William Shatner, actor
Ice-T, hip hop artist and actor
John Cleese, British actor and comedian
Al Gore, former vice president and eternal environmentalist
Oprah Winfrey, TV show host known for her charity
Lance Armstrong, 7-time Tour-de-France winner and cancer survivor
Ellen DeGeneres, TV show host with sweet dance moves
Sarah Palin, former vice presidential candidate and former governor of Alaska
Dave Matthews, musician
Yoko Ono, artist
Larry King, host of Larry King Live
Anderson Cooper, CNN anchor
and the U.S. Department of Education also tweets updates
(Sites like Famous Twit can help you find famous people on Twitter, but not all of the accounts listed are verified)
How to Use What You Know About Twitter in the Classroom:
You can have students write summaries that would fit in a Twitter post (140 characters or fewer). They can actually post these on Twitter, or just keep Twitter rules in mind when writing by hand. This is a good way to help students focus on important points and large themes. They can summarize chapters of a book or entire pieces of literature.
One of my favorite ideas for using Twitter in the classroom is to have students Tweet in character. Each student is assigned a character from a work and they have to Tweet as though they are that character. Students will have to be thoughtful with their Tweets since they're limited to only 140 characters. The coolest part is that they can Tweet to each other, collaborating and having conversations (hopefully involving multiple characters). Students can tag one another in their Tweets to facilitate multiple-character interactions. Students may even want to leave each other comments out of character to praise their Tweets or offer constructive criticism. If this is the case, you'll want to have a label for out-of-character Tweets so no one gets confused.
If you worry about online assignments and want to be able to delete any posts that may be inappropriate, you can create accounts for the characters ahead of time and then give each student her account's password. Well-known fictional characters may already have Twitter accounts, so you might have to add your school's initials to usernames (like AchillesFSHS).
And of course, you can always use Twitter to get student feedback and to send students assignment reminders. Tweeting links to current events related to your content area could be useful, too.
Next entry: Webcomics, or "Can Dinosaurs Really Teach Literary Techniques?"
maybe explain how tweets differ from texts, for us non-tweeters? (I do actually know, of course.) Especially with the example of one character tweeting another, it doesn't sound very different from texting. Any ideas for how to use the fact that the whole class can be following, instead of just single characters? Or is that obvious to everybody else?
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