Twitter: What can you do in 140 characters or less?

COM 160: New Communications Technologies

Social Media

Major characteristics of social media:1.Participate (such as voting behavior; i.e. liking something)2.Converse (posting a comment)3.Share (creating and posting material)4.Collaborate (creating content with members of a group; i.e. Wikipedia)5.Link up (social networks, friends of friends, groups based on similar interests)

Effects of Social Media

• Does not seem to impact usage of traditional media (most social media users are simultaneously utilizing social media and traditional media; multitasking)

• Changes the way we think of entertainment (more than 75% of digital video online is created by amateurs. No longer are professionally produced and distributed content our main source of entertainment)

• Has become indispensable to news gathering (postings on Facebook and Twitter are often a key source of info as news is breaking, YouTube videos broadcast on traditional news)

• Has become commercialized (it is now a feature of most marketing/advertising/public relations campaigns and efforts)

Twitter• a website, owned and operated by

Twitter Inc., which offers a social networking and microblogging service which enables its users to send and read other users' messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the user's profile page.

• Microblogging: a passive broadcast medium in the form of blogging; differs from a traditional blog in that its content is typically much smaller, in both actual size and aggregate file size.

• A microblog entry could consist of nothing but a short sentence fragment, an image or embedded video.

Features of Twitter• Twitter is an information network

made up of 140-character messages called Tweets. It's a new and easy way to discover the latest news (“what’s happening”) related to subjects you care about.

• reading Tweets and discovering new information whenever you check in on your Twitter timeline is where you’ll find the most value on Twitter

Following• Twitter’s feed is like

having a newspaper delivered to you, with only headlines you care about.

• Find businesses, celebrities, friends, news organizations and FOLLOW them to receive real-time information; see what feeds your friends follow

Features

• Real-time information: to optimize your Twitter experience, check it often. Information is sent instantly, and in a real-time timeline.

• Go Mobile: Total mobile users has jumped 62% since mid-April, 16% of all new users to Twitter start on mobile now, and 46%of active users make mobile a regular part of their Twitter experience. (Twitter.com)

• Instructions on how to get Twitter on your phone

Basic Twitter Terms• ReTweet (RT): re-posting someone

else’s tweet to your followers• Hashtags (#): helps add tweets to a

category; have the 'hash' or 'pound' symbol (#) preceding the tag, like so: #traffic, #followfriday, #hashtag. Hashtags can occur anywhere in the tweet: some people just add a # before a word they're using, or at the end of the tweet.

• Mentioning: To mention a user, or direct a tweet at a certain person add @ before the person’s username. @com160gcc, awesome #class today at #gcc

Basic Twitter Terms• Lists: Curated groups of other Twitter users.

Used to tie specific individuals into a group on your Twitter account. Displayed on the right side menu of your homepage. Learn more about lists.

• 3rd Party Application: A third-party application is a product created by a company other than Twitter and used to access Tweets and other Twitter data. Find out how to get help with an application.

• Unfollow: To cease following another Twitter user. Their Tweets no longer show up in your home timeline. Learn how to unfollow.

• Widget: A bit of code that can be placed anywhere on the web. Updates regularly with one's Twitter updates in real time.

Advanced Features• Adding photo and video to t

weets• You must sign up with 3rd

party applications to send multimedia (other than text) tweets. Twitter.com does not natively support image and video tweets

• Integrate Twitter with Facebook, blog, or website.

• Create lists to manage your feeds and to send directed tweets

Social Media as Mobilizers• Flash mobs• Arab Spring (video) (video) (video)• Occupy Wall Street• Russia and China have even set up alternative social

media ( Vkontakte in Russia and Kiaxin in China) where dissidents are more easily monitored.

• Social media may empower young people to assemble and throw off the reins of an oppressive regime, but the real test comes afterward when a new, more responsive government has to be created. So far, social media have not been as successful in promoting this more difficult task.