Using Twitter and TweetDeck

Twitter is an exciting application for communicating with a community of people with similar interests.

This Blogger page will be dedicated to Twitter. It will evolve throughout the semester as we have new things that we want to share about using Twitter. 

You will notice that this page is NOT a blog posting.  It is a separate page that you can use to include information on a specific topic. You might want to use it to include personal contact information or some sort of information that you don't want to include in the dynamic world of postings.  

How Can I Possibly Keep Up with Twitter and FaceBook and all of the Social Media????

As of today, there are 800 tweets per second.  No, they don't all go to you, but you can easily be overwhelmed by the incredible immensity of it all. I used to worry about trying to keep up with all of this until I heard Howard Rheingold explain that we need to look at Twitter as a stream. It is a stream of information that flows by. When you are thirsty, you go over and sip some tweets. When you have had enough, you go back to your regular life.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a tweet organizer that can make create small tidepools to filter this stream of tweets. It can be used to create specific columns for specific people or specific words/hashtags or follow predetermined lists. TweetDeck is also a powerful tool for organizing the tweets that you send.  It

It counts your characters, shortens the length of tweets through abbreviations (TweetShrink), and even shortens the length of URLs.  The most exciting part is that it enables you to schedule when your tweets will be sent.

1. Register for Twitter.
2. Register at the TweetDeck website.
3. Click the Desktop link to get to the Download page.
4. Download TweetDeck.

Here is a 13-minute video by LaurenCubed that will provide a good introduction to the possibilities and capabilities.  She does a good job of introducing the program. She mentions some other Web 2.0 applications, but don't worry about them. She even explains hashtags.

Even if you have already begun using TweetDeck, this will be a good overview of using TweetDeck.
(Double-click on the video if you want to go to YouTube where you can enlarge it and make it easier to see.)



Twitter is a great way to link with your classmates and other important people.  Return to the RWLD page to see how you need to set up your TweetDeck.

Return to RWLD by clicking on the Home button in the upper-right corner of this window.

image: thedesignsuperhero.com