The American Legion W.R.I.T.E.S

The American Legion Western Region Information & Technology Exchange Service.

This is a site is devoted to the free and open exchange of ideas and applications of pertinent information and technology to The American Legion.


Thursday, January 28, 2010

Tweets for Twitter

Twitter calls its status message "tweets." When it comes to integration with cell phones, Twitter is an extension of text messaging. When it comes to interaction, Twitter falls short of Facebook.

In Twitter creates its network by having:

  • Followers, who receive your tweets
  • Twitter users who you are following and receiving their tweets
  • Your account may be listed in a list of accounts created by another user
  • You can also follow lists, instead of individual users
Twitter tends to be a one way street. To be sure, Twitter does provide two communication options:
  • Replies provide a mechanism for your followers to respond to one of your tweets
  • Direct Messages allow someone who you are following to send you a private message
A very handy feature in Twitter is the ability to "retweet." Retweets are identified by the RT prefix to a tweet that you receive. It is a way of spreading the word to your followers, who can retweet the tweet again.

Many tweets contain a link to an external Web page. The maximum length for a tweet is 120 characters, which can make adding URLs real interesting. To solve this problem, you can shorten a URL using a service such bit.ly. Twitter will automatically attempt to shorten a URL using bit.ly. There are two reasons for having a separately bit.ly account:
  1. Occassionally, Twitter doesn't want to shorten a pasted URL that forces the tweet length to exceed the limit.
  2. With a bit.ly account, you can keep track of how many users have followed the link.
Twitter and Facebook are two huge communities. While some people belong to both, some only use one or the other. For organization to have maximum outreach, it needs both.

In the Facebook post, I mentioned the importance of creating a link between your fan page on Facebook and your Twitter account. This will save you double posting a status message. You always want to post the status message on Facebook, as Facebook has a longer status message. If the message is too long for Twitter, Facebook will use its own URL shortener (fb.me) to create a link to the full message from Twitter.

You have just joined the world of connecting social networks.
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