This second post of the Learn the Lingo series is about the popular and growing microblogging service Twitter. When a web trend hits the mainstream media, it has clearly hit a critical mass. This is exactly the case with Twitter.
According to estimates, it boasts almost 6 million users overall, and 54 million visitors a month. With a lot of buzz around it, you are right to ask: what exactly does Twitter do, and how can it be useful to me?
HowStuffWorks explains Twitter thusly: “When you sign up with Twitter, you can use the service to post and receive messages to a network of contacts.” In essence, you have 140 characters to post updates to others on what you and your organization is doing, and at the same time you can follow brief snippets of the work and thoughts of other individuals and organizations. And although the tool is called Twitter, the act of posting these messages is commonly referred to as tweeting, and the message itself is a tweet. A compilation of Twitter-related terms can be found on the Twitter Glossary.
You can post links to articles, videos, and your own websites (though you’ll want to shorten the size of the link with a tool like tinyurl, bit.ly, or is.gd). You can also reply to a tweet, either by clicking on the reply arrow for the tweet you are responding to or by typing @the-user-you-are-responding-to and your comments. You can forward info from a feed to your network by “retweeting,” generally done by first typing RT and then following the same procedure as a reply.
There are a myriad of ways to utilize Twitter. In a recent New York Times article,Twitter? It's What You Make It, Evan Williams, the company's CEO said:
Twitter, in other words, is precisely what you want it to be. It can be a business tool, a teenage time-killer, a research assistant, a news source — whatever. There are no rules, or at least none that apply equally well to everyone.
Due to its open and flexible nature, Twitter has some strong possibilities to help you contribute to the public good.
- Fundraising: nonprofits and individuals can use twitter to raise money for their causes. One method is using microdonation services (examples include tipjoy and twitpay). The New York-based charity:water used Twitter to publicize Twestival, a multi-city event which is brought in over $250,000 to bring clean water to needy populations (Eric introduced you to the idea and its results in his post, Twestival: $250,000 and counting, and Kristin and Stephanie attended the DC event and reported on it in their post, Post-Twestival debrief with @TheShackman and @Kivie.)
- Updates/News: Organizations like @FriendsofWFP and @the1010project use the service to send out relevant articles, event invitations and general news about their work.
- Questions: have a question about pretty much anything under the sun? Send it out over Twitter, and you can expect several good quality responses with linked resources. It is Google plus the human element.
Many more tools and techniques exist for maximizing Twitter for your goals. Most important is to sign-up, make some connections, and broadcast the wonderful work you all do!
More Resources:
- Twitter in Plain English – A straightforward video, using cutouts, of how and why Twitter works
- The Christian Science Monitor has a great article mapping out the development of the service
- Techsoup offers some good perspective on the role of Twitter in Online fundraising
- Sokunthea listed some of her favorite resources on how to use Twitter in her post, To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question
- Keep up with the Case Foundation via twitter @casefoundation; also Social Citizens @socialcitizen
Guest blogger Abbas Jaffer is a fellow at the Buxton Initiative, a Case Foundation partner organization.
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