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Twitter: What can you do in 140 characters or less?. COM 160: New Communications Technologies. Social Media. Major characteristics of social media: Participate (such as voting behavior; i.e. liking something) Converse (posting a comment) Share (creating and posting material)
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Twitter: What can you do in 140 characters or less? COM 160: New Communications Technologies
Social Media Major characteristics of social media: • Participate (such as voting behavior; i.e. liking something) • Converse (posting a comment) • Share (creating and posting material) • Collaborate (creating content with members of a group; i.e. Wikipedia) • 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 calledtweets. 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 tweets • 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.