Byte of the Week

Last week I talked about why you might want to Twitter. So I’m sure you’ve all jumped in and have been Tweeting ever since. Here are a few commands that will

#topic – I talked about this last week; it allows you to tag or add a subject to your message such as #worldseries for baseball fans (I made that up). The topics are very ad hoc.

FOLLOW username: turns on notifications for a specific individual (you’ll need to know their Twitter username)
LEAVE username: turns off notifications for a specific individual
DELETE username: deletes person from your following lsit

D username: sends a private message to a specific individual
@username: sends a public message to a specific individual; this message will archive in their replies tab, and be visible on your profile page

WHOIS username: returns bio info for a Twitter member
GET username: returns the last update from a specific individual
FAVE username: marks the last update of a user as a favorite

INVITE number/email: invites a friend via SMS/text message to join Twitter
STATS: returns statistics

ON: turns phone notifications on
OFF: turns phone notifications off

Good uses of Twitter http://twitter.com/

Last week I spoke to a group about Twitter. The big question was – why would I ever want to use it. Some folks used it with friends but couldn’t see a business use. So I wanted to outline some good uses.

First some Twitter basics: Twitter is like micro-blogging. You can publish messages up to 140 characters long. People sign up to get your messages; and you can sign up to get theirs. You can access Twitter from your computer or from your cell phone.

Twitter as Broadcast Tool

1. Imagine the Department of Transportation sending out updates and accidents and construction
2. Imagine a friend sending out updates of speed traps
3. Imagine a restaurant (such as Punch Pizza) sending out 2-for-1 pizza offers on a wintery day
4. Imagine someone sitting in legislative session and sending out updates of what’s happening

Twitter for Conversation

1. Imagine going to a conference and being able to send messages back and forth to other conference attendees
2. Imagine not attending the conference and still being able to follow the sessions through others’ messages
3. Imagine doing a search on a topic to find out who else is discussing/thinking about it right now
4. Imagine watching others discuss topics to see what’s going on in your field

Next week I’ll talk about more Twitter shortcuts – but one that has come up for me in the last week is the hashtag (#). You can use # to add a subject to your post. So if you’re Twittering at the NFOIC conference, you might add “#nfoic09” to each post and it would be easy for other Twits to find you and join your conversation. If I were holding a conference I might assign/suggest a tag for everyone to use. It’s a great way to get folks involved before, during and after the conference.

Yesterday I gave a presentation in Duluth. It was a fun group of nonprofits who were interested in why someone might want to blog or Twitter. (Learn more about the group here: http://twitter.com/techtues  

I thought I’d share the presentation with Byte Readers:

Also there was a follow up question:

How can I find people on Twitter?
There is a people search http://twitter.com/invitations/find_on_twitter – which is very OK. It really depends on the amount of info your Twitter friend has provided. The advanced Twitter search can also be helpful: http://search.twitter.com/advanced.  (It allows you to search by location.)

Also people wanted more info on promoting blogs and Tweets. I thought I had a post on that but I’m not finding it – so that will be my post week.

I’m not a big user (yet), but I wanted to send a note out about Utterli. I think it’s part podcast, part Twitter.

It’s free and easy tool and maybe a better way to go for folks who would rather talk than write. The tool is Utterli http://www.utterli.com

Just sign up for a free account. They will send you an email with instructions including a phone number that you can call to record a message. They will post that recording online and you can then sign in online to get the address of the new recording to paste into a blog post or web site or Twitter or email message…

Here’s my very brilliant first utter: http://www.utterli.com/u/utt/u-ODM5OTYyNQ

One last nice feature – you can set up and record a conference call on too.

So I was just invited to my first Flash Mob. Unfortunately it’s Saturday night in Dublin.

A flash mob is a group of people meeting in a public place to do something unusual. For example, I was invited to meet outside a pub and draw a circle on my hand. Usually it starts with a call to action via social networking tools – Facebook, Twitter, email, whatever. So I’m looking for a fun flash mob gig in the Twin Cities. I don’t know if the Twin Cities just isn’t as cool as Dublin or maybe I’m not so cool in the Twin Cities.

Have a great weekend! Ann