Twitter -- a tool for conversation and collaboration Skills: be able to use Twitter Concepts: a tool for collaboration, evolution of the service and its applications This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Where does this topic fit? Internet concepts Applications Technology Implications Internet skills Application development Content creation User skills (Twitter) We cover both skills and concepts in this presentation.

Twitter V1 -- what are you doing? Pause and watch this video. It explains what Twitter is. http://www.commoncraft.com/twitter

Not just personal friends The video stresses keeping up with your friends, but Twitter is used for much more. You can follow celebrities like Lady Gaga, professionals like Bill Gates and current events like the Arab spring. Twitter has become a significant tool for citizen journalism and professional communication.

Collaboration with colleagues Communication with organizations Twitter is known for celebrity broadcast fake news I use it for Text conversations Collaboration with colleagues Communication with organizations Blowing off steam There are some examples of my use of Twitter in this presentation.

A sample tweet Up to 280 characters @username Up to four pictures or One video or animated GIF Engagement Actions I received the tweet because I follow Trump. This tweet was sent by Donald J. Trump, whose Twitter name is @realDonaldTrump. He could have attached images or a video or animated GIF, but did not. The engagement – the number of people reacting to the tweet is shown below it. There is also a place to reply to the tweet. You should experiment with tweets – add an image, insert a URL, etc. The second-fourth images do not take more characters and URLs (web addresses) are shortened. I saw this tweet, but not all of Trump’s followers did -- a program at Twitter (an algorithm) decides which of Trump’s followers will see it

A tweet and reply The person you are replying to receives a notification. You can reply to a reply, starting a conversation. A student asked me a question. He knows I will be notified because he has “mentioned” me in his tweet. Since the mention is at the start of the tweet, I will see it, but none of his followers will – it’s a private tweet just to me.

A conversation You can reply to a reply, starting a conversation. The person you are replying to receives a notification. A student followed me. Then, as you saw in the previous slide, he sent me a question. I received a notification of his tweet so I read and replied to it. (Note that it shows engagement of one reply). The tweets are in reverse chronological order.

Two special characters @username: mention a particular Twitter user Hashtag (#): tag posts on a given topic Our class hashtag will be #DHNetLiteracy. I will use it to flag things I come across that are relevant to our class and urge you to do the same. If you start a tweet with a user name, he or she will be notified and only that user will see the tweet. That makes it easy to have two-person conversations. Hashtags are terms that are preceded by the number or hash sign (#). If everyone agrees to include a certain hashtag in their tweets on a given topic, it will be easy to retrieve them.

If you begin a tweet by mentioning a user, they will be notified and only they will see the tweet. If you mention a user at other places in a tweet, and they follow you, they will be notified.

Search Finds all tweets with the tag #DHNetLiteracy, regardless of who posted them Not case sensitive

Demonstration of the desktop user interface The user interface and features will change over time. Could you create a version of this presentation for Twitter’s mobile app?

Feedback and engagement Experiment – click on these to see what they do.

See tweets that include your handle Compose a new tweet See the tweets you have received (the “best” tweets by default). Search for tweets with a given hashtag, from a specified user, etc. Your picture Send a message to one or more people who you follow and who follow you Test each of these to be sure you see how it works. Match each of these actions with its icon.

Company contact/customer support To send a tweet to a specific person, begin it with their Twitter “handle.” Mine is @Larrypress and I had this conversation with @fiveletters. Fiveletters has developed a number of extensions for Google Chrome and I had a question and suggestion about their Post to Kindle extension. Within one day, they responded to my question and changed the app. Companies frequently have employees monitor their Twitter notifications. To send a

Collaboration with colleagues In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face. What will on-line interactive communities be like? ... They will be communities not of common location, but of common interest. Licklider and Taylor, 1968 JCR Licklider JCR Licklider envisioned a network of digital computers and arranged for funding of the ARPANet while serving as the head of the Information Processing Technology Office of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the Department of Defense. Licklider was also instrumental in funding the research that led to timesharing and the personal computer, including that of Doug Engelbart. Robert Taylor succeeded Licklider at ARPA and went on to found and direct the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where the modern personal computer, portable computer, Ethernet local area network, laser printer and client-server computing were invented. Throughout their careers, they worked on tools for communication and collaboration. Robert Taylor

Messages – collaborate with colleagues Messages are conversations between groups of two or more people who follow each other. Messages are conversations between groups of two or more people who follow each other. This is part of an ongoing conversation between myself, Dout and Armando. We have never met in person, but share a common interest. (Remember that JCR Licklidder, who funded much of the early computer network research, predicted iin 1966 that we would for communities of common interest, not com

A portion of the conversation

Summary We’ve seen that Twitter is a useful collaboration and communication tool and demonstrated a few features. Now you have to play around with it.

Resources How to use Twitter: critical tips for new users Twitter help center