This page will let you get started on Twitter.
The first thing you need to do is to join Twitter.
Go to this site: http://twitter.com/
and pick a name and password.
Tip: Try to keep your name as short as possible - it makes it faster for you and others to type and will not take up so many of the 140 you have to post when you are sending messages.
Tip: Try to keep your name as short as possible - it makes it faster for you and others to type and will not take up so many of the 140 you have to post when you are sending messages.
Next, you need to know about the 'sister site' http://search.twitter.com./
This site will allow you to not only search for people's username in the future, but also to look for particular topics in the whole of the 'twitterverse' (I know, I know - but I didn't create the word).
Go to search.twitter and type my twitter-name into the search box: "bbplesc" (but without the quotes) and then click on the "Search" button. This will take you to just my posts. Click on my picture or my name and you will be taken to a page where you will see my posts and a picture of me (or my icon) on the top left. You will also see a button marked "Follow". Click on the "Follow" button and your in. That's all it takes!
OK, where do you go from here and what can you do next?
First, you will see in the middle right of the screen some little boxes of all the other people who are following. You need to click on all individual boxes in turn. As you get to their site, click on the box to follow them too. This gets you wired in to the community. It lets you see all their conversations within the 'tribe'. You can now read the posts of everyone in the tribe, make a contribution, ask questions - anything.
I will get a notification from the system I have set up which lets me see that you are now following in our 'tribe'. When I get that I will follow you back. We can then send each other DM's (direct messages) - just like emails (so nobody else can see them) but they are only allowed to be 140 characters long.
Next, if you click on my icon on the top right of the page you will get another page of just my 'tweets' (individual posts) - but importantly under the new picture it will say "Website". If you click on that link you will come to this blog, so you never have to remember the address of the blog, you can just access it quickly through Twitter.
We can use twitter as a kind of electronic notice-board. (NB: As this is a social networking site (though we are using it for business) your organisation may have a policy which prevents you from using Twitter at work. Be careful. Check it out. For what it's worth I posted a link on Twitter about a firm who have found a way to sell Twitter to the management as it made significant improvements in project working).
Now you might be wondering what you could possibly put on Twitter, so here are a few suggestions:
If you find a good explanation in a text book. . .
If you find a poor explanation in a text book. . .
If you find a blog with a good example. . .
If you see a news story and you have a comment about it. . .
If you see a news story or any other article you think is interesting. . .
If you find a reference which has helped you with your assignment. . .
If you want help with something. . .
If you hear a good podcast. . .
If you can pass on a useful website. . .
If there is a juicy Law problem. . .
If you hear some breaking news. . .
If you want to set up a revision session with your colleagues. . .
If you want to add to or correct what someone else has written. . .
. . . just post a tweet!
You can search on Twitter. If you wanted to find my posting about CSR, say, you would go to search.twitter and enter bpplesc CSR and click the search button and it would take you straight to it. If you just type CSR in the box you would get every reference to CSR on Twitter! Hmmm, interesting. . .
Look at the top right of your page and you will see a "Settings" tab. It does what it says on the tab. Here you can change things about your account and upload a picture. Please do upload a picture or even an icon. It just looks really boring and 'newbie' to just have the default o_O icon. It also makes it easier to identify you and to find you to send a DM.
You can upload any appropriate picture of .jpeg format.
What else? Well you can block people, so you don't need to fear stalkers (and you can unblock people if they start being nice to you again).
Please don't click the "Privacy" button in your settings unless you are really sure it is what you want to do. What this will do is to stop people in the timeline i.e. all the rest of Twitter, from seeing your posts. It also means that you won't be able to search on your own posts either. Not good if you want to find a brilliant article you posted some time ago!
Here's another really useful tip. There is another site you will find useful. http://tinyurl.com/
Here you cut the long URL from the site you have found and paste it into the box. When you click on Make TinyURL it takes the big address and condenses it down. This is really useful in keeping down your post into the maximum 140 characters. It is useful to give an idea of what the article is about in your tweet others won't know what the article is about and it will make it harder to search for it again too. So you might write "Here are the latest unemployment figures http:/tinyurl/qwerty"
At the end of each tweet line you will see two icons if you hover your mouse over them - a star and a curved arrow. Click the star and it will make a gold star appear. This is then saved as a favourite which you can find quicker next time. Clicking the curved arrow will allow you to reply directly to someone in the box above (it will automatically show their name). This is not the same as a DM - everyone will be able to see the reply.
Twitter will not replace email for official communications. I'm doing this off my own bat, there is no company liability accepted or implied. I am providing it as a service to students as a resource. If you don't want to use it, that's fine by me.
Finally, I am not going to be too heavy handed about the thread. There is one thing I am keen on, however - this is not going to have any hangers-on. If you are following, you need to contribute to the tribe. Every couple of months or so I will block those who have not contributed. It is not fair that someone can benefit from reading the articles that others are posting and not help in return. Also, I would ask that we keep tweets as useful and relevant as possible. Some questions and personal commentary are inevitable, useful and desirable, but I would like to keep it practical and reasonably professional and relevant. Personal comments and jokes or joke sites can best be put into a DM.
OK, where do you go from here and what can you do next?
First, you will see in the middle right of the screen some little boxes of all the other people who are following. You need to click on all individual boxes in turn. As you get to their site, click on the box to follow them too. This gets you wired in to the community. It lets you see all their conversations within the 'tribe'. You can now read the posts of everyone in the tribe, make a contribution, ask questions - anything.
I will get a notification from the system I have set up which lets me see that you are now following in our 'tribe'. When I get that I will follow you back. We can then send each other DM's (direct messages) - just like emails (so nobody else can see them) but they are only allowed to be 140 characters long.
Next, if you click on my icon on the top right of the page you will get another page of just my 'tweets' (individual posts) - but importantly under the new picture it will say "Website". If you click on that link you will come to this blog, so you never have to remember the address of the blog, you can just access it quickly through Twitter.
We can use twitter as a kind of electronic notice-board. (NB: As this is a social networking site (though we are using it for business) your organisation may have a policy which prevents you from using Twitter at work. Be careful. Check it out. For what it's worth I posted a link on Twitter about a firm who have found a way to sell Twitter to the management as it made significant improvements in project working).
Now you might be wondering what you could possibly put on Twitter, so here are a few suggestions:
If you find a good explanation in a text book. . .
If you find a poor explanation in a text book. . .
If you find a blog with a good example. . .
If you see a news story and you have a comment about it. . .
If you see a news story or any other article you think is interesting. . .
If you find a reference which has helped you with your assignment. . .
If you want help with something. . .
If you hear a good podcast. . .
If you can pass on a useful website. . .
If there is a juicy Law problem. . .
If you hear some breaking news. . .
If you want to set up a revision session with your colleagues. . .
If you want to add to or correct what someone else has written. . .
. . . just post a tweet!
You can search on Twitter. If you wanted to find my posting about CSR, say, you would go to search.twitter and enter bpplesc CSR and click the search button and it would take you straight to it. If you just type CSR in the box you would get every reference to CSR on Twitter! Hmmm, interesting. . .
Look at the top right of your page and you will see a "Settings" tab. It does what it says on the tab. Here you can change things about your account and upload a picture. Please do upload a picture or even an icon. It just looks really boring and 'newbie' to just have the default o_O icon. It also makes it easier to identify you and to find you to send a DM.
You can upload any appropriate picture of .jpeg format.
What else? Well you can block people, so you don't need to fear stalkers (and you can unblock people if they start being nice to you again).
Please don't click the "Privacy" button in your settings unless you are really sure it is what you want to do. What this will do is to stop people in the timeline i.e. all the rest of Twitter, from seeing your posts. It also means that you won't be able to search on your own posts either. Not good if you want to find a brilliant article you posted some time ago!
Here's another really useful tip. There is another site you will find useful. http://tinyurl.com/
Here you cut the long URL from the site you have found and paste it into the box. When you click on Make TinyURL it takes the big address and condenses it down. This is really useful in keeping down your post into the maximum 140 characters. It is useful to give an idea of what the article is about in your tweet others won't know what the article is about and it will make it harder to search for it again too. So you might write "Here are the latest unemployment figures http:/tinyurl/qwerty"
At the end of each tweet line you will see two icons if you hover your mouse over them - a star and a curved arrow. Click the star and it will make a gold star appear. This is then saved as a favourite which you can find quicker next time. Clicking the curved arrow will allow you to reply directly to someone in the box above (it will automatically show their name). This is not the same as a DM - everyone will be able to see the reply.
Twitter will not replace email for official communications. I'm doing this off my own bat, there is no company liability accepted or implied. I am providing it as a service to students as a resource. If you don't want to use it, that's fine by me.
Finally, I am not going to be too heavy handed about the thread. There is one thing I am keen on, however - this is not going to have any hangers-on. If you are following, you need to contribute to the tribe. Every couple of months or so I will block those who have not contributed. It is not fair that someone can benefit from reading the articles that others are posting and not help in return. Also, I would ask that we keep tweets as useful and relevant as possible. Some questions and personal commentary are inevitable, useful and desirable, but I would like to keep it practical and reasonably professional and relevant. Personal comments and jokes or joke sites can best be put into a DM.
All of us are better than any of us. If you find an article, podcast, news-report, graph, blog - whatever - which has been useful to you the chances are that other students will also find it useful. Hopefully they will be doing the same. We will then have multiple eyes bringing gold nuggets back to this wonderful noticeboard for us all to share. As I said, it should be a great resource if used properly.
Any questions, let me know.
