{"id":679,"date":"2009-01-14T11:24:50","date_gmt":"2009-01-14T19:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nnlm.gov\/pnr\/dragonfly\/?p=679"},"modified":"2026-01-27T14:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T14:37:07","slug":"twitter","status":"archive","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"Look Who&#8217;s Tweeting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You&#8217;ve heard of blogging, but have you heard of <a title=\"Wikipedia article on microblogging\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Microblogging\">microblogging<\/a>? <a title=\"Twitter\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\">Twitter<\/a>, the most popular microblogging platform, is a place on the web where people give updates on their lives by answering the question &#8220;What are you doing?&#8221; in 140 characters or less.\u00a0 The character limit makes it &#8220;micro.&#8221; Is this a practical way to share information? Is it a colossal waste of time? You&#8217;ll be the judge of that! Here are a few reasons to give <a title=\"Twitter\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\">Twitter<\/a> a chance, along with some basic instructions for getting started.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Community. <\/strong> Even if you are the only person for miles around who does what you do, Twitter can make you feel like you have an office full of colleagues. Suddenly you&#8217;ll have a whole community of people who understand why you get so excited about <a title=\"new MeSH headings\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nlm.nih.gov\/mesh\/whatsnew.html\">new MeSH headings<\/a>! By keeping tabs on how other librarians spend their everyday lives, I find colleagues who are working on similar projects and wrestling with similar ideas. Of course, not all &#8220;tweets&#8221; are serious and work-related. Twitter also helps me get to know my colleagues as people. Knowing something about a Twitter contact&#8217;s hobbies or sense of humor helps to break the ice when I meet that person face-to-face.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Quicker than blogging.<\/strong> A good, thoughtful blog post takes a long time to compose. With Twitter, you can share a quick thought without feeling pressured to add a lengthy commentary. Twitter rules mandate that you cut to the chase! With a 140-character limit, you will quickly learn how to be concise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Other creative uses. <\/strong>Twitter users are really inventive! Libraries use Twitter as a newsletter, as a collaboration tool, and even to support reference service.\u00a0 <a title=\"Qwitter\" href=\"http:\/\/qwitter.tobaccofreeflorida.com\/\">Qwitter<\/a> and TweetWhatYouEat help to promote healthy lifestyles. Twitter has even been used successfully to <a title=\"fundraise\" href=\"http:\/\/beth.typepad.com\/beths_blog\/2008\/12\/ive-seen-first-hand-how-you-can-leverage-your-twitter-network-for-good-causes-and-raise-money-for-a-good-cause-really-fast-w.html\">raise funds for good causes.<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Here&#8217;s how to get started:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Go to <a title=\"Twitter\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\">twitter.com<\/a> and sign up for a free account.<\/p>\n<p>2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Post your first update! This was mine:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"my first tweet\" src=\"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/pnr\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/images\/dragonfly\/first.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"52\" \/><\/p>\n<p>3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Find some people or groups to follow.\u00a0 Start by following the medlibs , the GroupTweet for Medical Libraryfolk. This group is 126 members strong and moderated by <a title=\"eagledawg\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/eagledawg\">eagledawg<\/a>, a familiar face around here.<\/p>\n<p>Follow the National Institutes of Health on Twitter to receive updates about <a title=\"nih for health\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/nihforhealth\">health research<\/a> and\/or <a title=\"nih for funding\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/nihforfunding\">funding information<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You can also find people to follow on Twitter by searching for their names or linking your Twitter account to your e-mail contacts list. If you want to know who&#8217;s tweeting about, say, healthcare, <a title=\"Twitter Search\" href=\"http:\/\/search.twitter.com\/\">Twitter Search<\/a> will give you a nice sampling.<\/p>\n<p>4.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Choose how you would like to send and receive tweets. I use the Firefox extension <a title=\"twitterfox\" href=\"http:\/\/twitterfox.net\/\">Twitterfox<\/a> so I can see tweets in my browser without having to leave a tab open for twitter.com. Twhirl and <a title=\"friendfeed\" href=\"http:\/\/friendfeed.com\/\">friendfeed<\/a> are two other options for managing tweets.<\/p>\n<p>5.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Season to taste. There is no reason to let keeping up with Twitter updates become a burden to you. It may take some time before you find the right mix of feeds to follow. Jessamyn at <a title=\"librarian.net\" href=\"http:\/\/librarian.net\">librarian.net<\/a> recently shared some guidelines for <a title=\"librarian.net post\" href=\"http:\/\/www.librarian.net\/stax\/2640\/two-notes-about-twitter\/\">striking the right balance<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Lingo:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Tweet &#8211; a tweet is a post or a message on Twitter.<\/p>\n<p>@ &#8211; Typing the &#8216;@&#8217; symbol in a tweet before someone&#8217;s Twitter username indicates that you are responding to something that person tweeted earlier. Your tweet will be still be public. Here is an example:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"eagledawgs tweet\" src=\"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/pnr\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/images\/dragonfly\/wmla1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"561\" height=\"73\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"aldrichams reply\" src=\"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/pnr\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/images\/dragonfly\/wmla2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"332\" height=\"143\" \/><\/p>\n<p>D\u00a0 for Direct Message &#8211; Typing &#8216;D&#8217; in a tweet before someone&#8217;s Twitter username sends a private message to that person. The Twitter group medlibs works with direct messages. Once you become a follower of medlibs, medlibs will follow you back. To tweet something to the entire medlibs group, send a direct message. For example:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"direct message\" src=\"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/pnr\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/images\/dragonfly\/DM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"535\" height=\"90\" \/><\/p>\n<p>RT\u00a0 or Retweet &#8211; Add &#8216;RT&#8217; to your tweet as a courtesy when you are re-posting someone else&#8217;s tweet. For example:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"retweet\" src=\"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/pnr\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/images\/dragonfly\/retweet.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"538\" height=\"77\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Tinyurl &#8211; Long, messy URLs can eat up your 140 character limit very quickly. Use a service such as <a title=\"tinyurl\" href=\"http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/\">tinyurl<\/a> or <a title=\"Shrinkify\" href=\"http:\/\/shrinkify.com\/\">shrinkify<\/a> to reduce the length of those URLs before posting them in your tweets.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve been skeptical of Twitter, I hope this post convinces you to give it a try. Leave a comment to let us know what you think.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Additional Resources:<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Twitter in Plain English\" href=\"http:\/\/www.commoncraft.com\/twitter\">Twitter in Plain English<\/a> &#8211; a must-see!<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"doctor\" href=\"http:\/\/casesblog.blogspot.com\/2008\/06\/doctors-opinion-why-i-started.html\">A Doctor&#8217;s Opinion: Why I Started Microblogging on Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You&#8217;ve heard of blogging, but have you heard of microblogging? Twitter, the most popular microblogging platform, is a place on the web where people give updates on their lives by answering the question &#8220;What are you doing?&#8221; in 140 characters or less.\u00a0 The character limit makes it &#8220;micro.&#8221; Is this a practical way to share&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/twitter\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-679","post","type-post","status-archive","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17308,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679\/revisions\/17308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}