In Soviet Russia, breakfast tweets YOU
I follow a few people on Twitter, from a total of three accounts (which we might class as personal, business and hobby, I guess). Some of them are kind enough to follow me back. And I’ve noticed quite a strange, yet encouraging, phenomenon over the last year or so.
Twitter has moved from being a somewhat banal way of telling the world what you had for breakfast, to a useful tool. It’s used for exchanging thoughts about speakers and what they’re saying at conferences. From a corporate point of view, it can be used to keep customers informed—and more importantly, to listen to what they’re saying about you (that is, according to the self-appointed social media mavens, the third rule or something. I don’t really know. We’re all still learning to use it, notwithstanding what follows). I organized a meeting with a friend I hadn’t seen in four or more years on Tuesday, using Twitter.
It’s Twitter 2.0.
There are several interesting (and useful!) people I’ve met because I have twitter accounts, and recently I’ve been using it to drive traffic to various blogs. At work this week I had to decide whether a banner ad for our contributor site would feature our LinkedIn or Facebook page, or our twitter address. I realized that everything, sooner or later, went through twitter; so that one won (and then our web designer made a rotating banner so the question became moot, but anyway).
The 140 character limit, far from being limiting, has resulted in tremendously inventive ways of processing and aggregating information (it has to be said, helped enormously by http://bit.ly, which comes with built-in stats tools).
Everybody who is anybody is doing it. Only a few years ago people were insisting ‘You must have a website!’: that’s now so obvious that no one says it anymore. We’re not at that stage yet with Twitter, but we will be soon: and then the next new thing will come along (Twitter is already so mainstream that people are making YouTube parodies of Twitter applications. Brilliant).
I love living in the Twenty-first Century. Bring it on.
I’m using Twitter in a banal way: I have 3 to 4 times more followers than I follow (but I read every single tweet of the 100 people I do follow. At least I can keep up that way) and I talk about my cat and my hairdresser. Twitter gets out the most superficial and dumb parts of me.
Cool. That means you get rid of all the shite so you can write quality blogs.
Everybody who is anybody is doing it
I’m not on Twitter, primarily because in the context of work, I don’t see a use for it in the capacities of teaching, research, or writing manuscripts. That’s not to say that there isn’t a good reason for me to be on Twitter, of course. But in the absence of any compelling evidence for a job-related application of Twitter in my current circumstances, I’ll happily remain not anybody.
Ha ha!
Forgive a blogger a bit of hyperbole every now and then, Kristi.
Your attitude is reasonably healthy, in my opinion. Twitter is teeming with those self-appointed gurus telling us we should be there, and how to use it. Generally they’re engaging in shameless self-promotion, but that’s not to say there isn’t value. And some people might not see any value at all, and I don’t think they should go looking for applications to use just because everyone is doing it. (Many corporate and scientific tweetbots are simply doing what is better done by RSS: but at least Twitter gives you an RSS feed to all tweets, so you don’t have to ‘follow’ to see what’s going on.)
Having said that, we have to realize, for example, our students might be saying things about us, and it behooves us to be aware, if not actually stick our fingers in.
bq. I talk about my cat and my hairdresser. Twitter gets out the most superficial and dumb parts of me.
Oh dear, oh dear.
I recently discovered Bubbletweet, through The Expert. You get to talk for up to 30s in a bubble.
Oh… dear. The last thing a lot of twits need is more outlet.
Thirty seconds is about right, actually. Just editing Eva’s bit for the next LabLit podcast and I’m limiting the different voices to 30s before switching.
And some people might not see any value at all, and I don’t think they should go looking for applications to use just because everyone is doing it
That’s precisely the way I feel about Twitter at the moment, though of course it may may change. I know that many of the students use Facebook, but I’ve yet to be convinced that it’s useful, or even wise, for me to join them. Electronic exchanges through e-mail and Blackboard seem to work perfectly well at the moment. Yes, various gurus have blithely suggested that a genuinely clever individual should be able to find an application of Twitter (or whatever) in any teaching context, but in my experience, the “gurus” are completely disconnected from the realities of four days/week gross anatomy and neuroscience lectures and laboratories with 230 medical students and 100 dental students. Of course, it would be equally ridiculous for me to claim that Twitter (or whatever) was useless in the context of a job or task with which I have little or no experience.
But you won’t catch me doing that. 😉
Heh. I can just imagine tweeting intricacies of the cranial nerves in 140 characters.
Having said that, we have to realize, for example, our students might be saying things about us
omg that has never occured to me!!
I’m not on twitter yet because there are so many new things to enjoy and figure out but I’ve been thinking for a while that maybe I ought to play around with twitter.
I’ve also been thinking about second life…
Reading that back it sounds sarcastic – but it totally wasn’t meant to be.
I meant that whilst obviously students talk about us it never occurred to me they would be doing it on twitter.
No worries, Samantha.
I wouldn’t really, muck around with 2L. I had a go a year or two back but my 1L is quite complicated enough, TYVM. Might be good for conferences (a la Solo09) but not sure it’d find a business use (Webex seems to work quite well, frexample).
“I don’t see a use for it in the capacities of teaching”
A lecturer friend of mine actually came up with a use for Twitter in the classroom. She wanted to try it this year, but don’t know if she has yet. She taught a course to 1200 students, who had tutorials in groups of 200 or so, in a GIANT lecture hall. Her idea was to set up a live feed of Tweets with a certain tag, and let the students “interrupt” the class by Twitter, so that they could comment when something wasn’t clear while the tutorial was in action. In smaller tutorial groups they would do that just by speaking up, but because there are so many she said the sessions end up being just like a lecture, and the whole interactive part was missing.
The drawback was that not every student is on Twitter, that all their friends who are not in the class would see their school-related tweets, and that they might have anonymous accounts that they didn’t want their classmates to find. But they could always set up a dedicated class account, and lock that so only the lecturer (and the “live” board) could see it. The drawback to that is that they’d need to create a new account. Plus, Twitter is not the most stable platform…
I am chuckling because the one drawback that I thought of never even crossed your mind… that they might not all have an internet device on them. I guess everyone takes either a laptop or iPhone to a class these days?
Yeah, they all have their laptop with them to take notes. They have to borrow pens when something like a signup sheet or survey comes along, because who needs a pen in class?
And yes, they have Facebook open in another window.
Haha. God, I’m so old-fashioned.
Oops, comments crossed.
Facebook? I thought they dropped that as soon as they realized their tutors were using it?
No, they try to add their lecturers as friends. There are guidelines for staff on what to do about that. (Don’t accept the invitation, even if they really are your friend. Tell them you’d be happy to add them after they graduate. Only very few will still request it then.)
Rilly?
I am quite surprised they want to. I still keep getting my last boss suggested as a friend on FB. It’s bad enough with all these requests from people I’d rather forget about than having colleagues and students too.
The drawback was that not every student is on Twitter
That’s a huge drawback, IMO, and potentially a legal issue. The largest class size I’ve dealt with is about 230, and I encourage students to stop me and ask questions. Lecture slides and notes are available on Blackboard, and all lectures also become podcasts (formerly just audio, now video as well), available to the students. Many questions can be answered by e-mail, or a student can come by my office/lab to talk. In anatomy labs and case conferences, we work with 4 to 30 students in a group; those sessions, as well as my embryology and neuroscience review sessions, are “unplugged”. Give me a chalkboard and a couple of pieces of chalk, and I can lay out the connections and intricacies of the trigeminal nerve, or of cerebellar pathways, for example, in just a few minutes. Discussion and lesions take longer, of course.
I won’t be on Facebook, ever.
lesions take longer, of course.
remind me not to come to one of your classes.
(Sorry)
That is the difference between lifecasting and miindcasting with Twitter being just one tool in the new communication/journalistic workflow
And as far as classroom goes, Miss Baker and her students told us last year at ScienceOnline09 that they use private Twitter accounts to discuss assignments and homework
Legal issue? How? They are probably already Twittering about class while there – it’s just not being projected on a screen. I’ve been to a few conferences and other events that show live Twitter feeds to the audience.
One of my friends doesn’t want me to mention or describe to him anything that we did in gross anatomy lab. Ever.
“Lesions”, in my case, refers to neuroanatomy – draw the pathways, and then discuss the functional consequences of having nerve injury, or a stroke, or a tumor, at a particular part of the pathway. That’s been a change of mindset for me, as I come from a vertebrate evolutionary neurobiology background, not a clinical one.
Eva, I wonder if the legal issues refer to accessibility? Or maybe something to do with the Uni not wanting its material to get into the wild?
Kristi, it’s bigger than a cell. I’m already lost.
@ Eva – The potential legal issue is that the students who are not on Twitter, for whatever reason, might feel that they missed something that was critical to success on the exams. If you think that this is an utterly outlandish scenario, then you probably don’t have much experience with the litigious nature of US society (which I would consider a fortunate circumstance, actually).
Ah yes, that was my first guess, and I don’t think it’s at all outlandish.
@ Richard – Yes, so it is an accessibility issue, and, as you suggested, a potential copyright (material “into the wild”) issue to boot. If I develop review sheets and diagrams for, say, neuroanatomy, they are my intellectual property, and by extension, the university’s as well. Plenty of students have made a pretty penny by selling such things, whether they created them or not. I have no interest in making money from my diagrams, but the university might have other ideas, and encourage me to assemble them into a booklet or textbook.
People are already using it, though. Even in the US (see Bora’s comment). And I don’t see how someone saying “Can you explain this graph again, please?” or “Is this going to be on the exam???” is a copyright risk for the university, but maybe it is. I don’t know.
I resisted Twitter for ages, and now love it. It’s probably the fastest way I know to disseminate information to a targeted audience.
I think the thing is Eva, that the University doesn’t want its teaching materials to go outside. So if you could have a private twitter channel, it might be OK. I guess if the lecturer says (rather than twitters) the material in response to a tweet that’s OK?
Oh, that was the idea. The lecturer is just lecturing, and questions come in on the screen instead of by yelling.
Yeah, I find it difficult to see why that might be a legal issue. Although I don’t see the advantage (excepting the huge classes, natch) over yelling.
Jenny’s right. I think more people use twitter than regularly check RSS. I actually have no data, it’s just a gut feeling.
And I don’t see how someone saying “Can you explain this graph again, please?” or “Is this going to be on the exam???” is a copyright risk for the university
Well, that wouldn’t be, obviously, and neither would discussions of homework assignments or study questions. The copyright issues would arise with links to images, lecture notes, slides, etc. developed by the faculty, but if the tweets themselves are private, then presumably the linked material would be as well. Of course, any material can be downloaded by students and distributed in various ways that can’t be controlled – that is a worry for Blackboard, as well as for Twitter. I don’t see the advantages of Twitter in my particular circumstances, sorry.
And I just now coordinated with a friend to put some samples in my -80C freezer this afternoon, using e-mail on Blackberry (my friend) and iPhone (me). Worked well, and quickly – why add Twitter?
Also, I’m trying to imagine a community in which all high school students in a class have computers and internet access. There are many schools here that don’t have computers for the students to use.
Worked well, and quickly – why add Twitter?
That’s actually a very good reason: I wonder if anyone else can work it out?
Hint: nodes.
s/That’s/There’s/;
I don’t know nothin’ about no nodes.
Would I need to add a third ringtone to my iPhone? New phone call, new text message, new e-mail, new tweet?
s/third/fourth
Can’t count. I’m doomed.
I certainly want a push twitter application, that is set to ping when someone @s me.
Very interesting discussion.
It occurred to me a few comments back that it’s worth flagging up the Session from Science Online London 2009 entitled Real-time statistics in science with talks from Victor Henning, Richard Grant and Virginia Barbour.
The archived video recording of the session can be viewed here.
Other than the content of the Session itself, what was rather novel was the fact that on the screens to the left and right of the main screen were live feeds (about the Conference) from Twitter and FriendFeed. Never seen this before. At times, probably down to the novelty of this, I personally found it a wee bit distracting, but that aside, I very much like the concept of this.
My question therefore would be, has there been any feedback from other attendees, and if so, what did folks have to say?
I personally couldn’t read the screen, but I hardly blame the speakers for my eyesight… (Victor has even once, when I first met him, recommended laser eye surgery to me, so if anything they were very helpful in that regard.)
I’ve also seen a similar thing at a huge christmas party last year, and there it was a great way to find out which other people were also there and talking with people across the crowded room. I blogged about it
I saw tweets yesterday requesting an augmented reality app to stick on your iPhone to show you where tweets were coming from.
That would be totally Star trek.
I like Twitter. I use it for banal purposes and for rants. Tho’ I am beginning to use it to make contacts. I have found though, that the ability to add a picture very easily, and to Tweet a pic from one’s iPhone, have meant that I write far fewer blogs of the ‘isn’t-this-an-interesting-picture’ variety. I just tweet’em instead.
Having said that …
I was at a panel at a conference yesterday where Twitter was projected on screen behind – as from where I’d been sitting in the audience earlier, some Tweets were pretty rude about the speakers, I was rather thrown by this (as the screen was behind the panellists’ heads I couldn’t read it). What was worse, sharing a panel with Ben Goldacre or worrying that people’s live Twitters about your dullness in comparision were appearing as you speak?
I joined Twitter back in 2007 when it started but never used it as I had no use for it. Recently, however, my blog has offered a “Twitter feed” widget which shows my five most recent Tweets. Ever since I started that blog I have wanted my RSS reader integrated into the sidebar, but that has never been provided. So it occurred to me the other week that I could use Twitter in this way. Hence I use it as a “mini news feed”, ie to highlight interesting posts/articles in my blog sidebar – things that I’m not actually going to blog about for one reason or another, but that I think my blog readers might be interested in. So — echoing what various people are saying — Twitter is just like any other application in that if it enhances your online life, you’ll use it – if it doesn’t, you won’t.
I actually think Twitter is a bit rubbish for this conference blogging stuff – at yesterday’s conference (when I wasn’t on a panel) I was following the Tweets with mesmerised interest – but virtually all of them were picking up soundbites or expostulating about what someone had said – often misunderstanding quite profoundly and hence miscommunicating what the speaker was saying. Or, adding a disagreement to what a speaker was arguing, while ignoring the points the speaker had made- 140 characters vs someone actually constructing a point of view in 5 mins…hmmm.
I don’t object to it in any way. But I would not believe statements in a Twitter. Well, I might believe what someone said they had for breakfast, but not regard it as a source of significant info or news. As Richard says, I do find it useful to sometimes follow a link Tweeted by someone I am following. But I think that most people I follow on Twitter are people I know or have discovered by other means – eg I have started following one or two of the speakers at that conference I thought were interesting. I don’t think I have actually discovered very many “new to me” people directly on Twitter without any other context.
Y’know Maxine, if I’d realized you were going to be there I’d have rearranged and come along myself instead of sending my colleague. However, seeing as Goldacre was there perhaps it’s for the best.
but virtually all of them were picking up soundbites or expostulating about what someone had said – often misunderstanding quite profoundly and hence miscommunicating what the speaker was saying
[sarcasm] Oooh, that sounds wonderful for the lecture hall here at MedEdU. Totally communications workflow and heuristic. Can’t wait to try it out with my pharyngeal arch lecture next week. Wonder if I can get our communications people to project a Twitter feed, on short notice?[/sarcasm]
Sara F of NN was there, and wrote a very good blog report if anyone is interested.
The blog post updates bother me on Twitter (and Facebook). I see an update in Google Reader, read the post… and then see it show up again on Twitter and on Facebook. I don’t need 3 notifications for the same thing. I know not everyone follows/is friends with exclusively the people whose blogs they read anyway, but surely most people have substantial overlap?
And I really, really, really don’t care what song someone is listening to. Especially when someone has 5 or 6 of those song tweets filling up my Twitterfox box AND my Facebook home page.
Yah. A certain person told me that my FB/Twitter linkup was annoying, so I nixed it.
What I find frustrating is some twitterer’s habit of sending out news that I saw on twitter three days ago already. Although… that’s the subject of another blog post.
I like the selective twitter status app on Facebook, which lets you add #fb to only those tweets you want to show up on your profile page.
I knew about that. Yeah.
_ I certainly want a push twitter application, that is set to ping when someone @s me._
Something like boxcar?
Hmm… interested look
You know, Twitter is ideal for saying pithy things such as:
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Matey!
That is all.
In my case I’m still waiting the iPhone as answer for the survey of Nature (Some time ago).
¿What happen? Yap.
Thank you Richard.
Alejandro, you mean you didn’t get an iPhone for that? Everyone else I spoke to got three.
Richard – I only have a mobile phone. Maybe, is no necesary other phone. Finally one begins to accumulate more materials and then do not know what to do.
Is just rubbish.
For sure.
Is just rubbish.
It’s not just rubbish. Eva could make a film with that.
Alejandro – are all those phones yours?
Alejandro – are all those phones yours? Quite possibly, Henry. I’ve heard he’s quite a hit with the ladies 😉
Henry – I answer all the surveys submitted by Nature and the respective award (one iPhone), but I lacked one (_ja, ja_, laugh).
Graham – Just is try to succeed with Mrs. Correa.
And Eva, how make the film, Richard?
One beer, please!
Not having twitter (although realizing from this post that I should, if only to really get what you all are on about) I am anyway happy that the discussion now reached I point where I could join it. Beer and film 🙂
Well sometimes we combine beer and twitter but I think films and twitter might be a tweet too far.
Of course to actually look at that link I have to get Twitter. OK, I guess I should. Soon. Maybe later today even…
Mwah hah hah. There is no escape. If you’ve got an iPhone (by the way, GMail finally supports push email \o/ ) then I’d recommend the execrably named but lovely app call ‘Echofon’.
Excuse my friends for my bad English, be due say:
Henry – I’ve answered all the surveys submitted by Nature and the respective award (an iPhone and other class of phones), but I lacked one (hah, hah)
Other beer, please!
What beer would you like, Alejandro?
an Gulden draak or Pirat, are a good beer.
You should tweet that.
Sorry Piraat
Is a survey?
What is the reward, Richard?
I had an old LG knocking around somewhere. But I think I threw it out.
As you know?
Is no important, Richard G. Cheer.
What is happening here? How many beers have we had already?
Richard – one step at the time – I am agreeing to get twitter (although probably tomorrow rather than today…) but let’s wait with the phone and the applications to next week or so 🙂
I have no idea, Anna. I reckon Alejandro has his only little microbrewery going on there, and he’s the chief taster.
Welcome on board, too. Don’t forget to tell us who you are 🙂
One of the most depressing things I’ve ever heard was after getting off a 30 hour flight to Sweden. Fairly parched, I asked one of our local colleagues what the best Swedish beer was.
“There is no good Swedish beer” I spun on my heel trying to get back on the plane “There is some good Czech stuff though”
Oh, OK then, I’ll stay.
I have an observation. Comment threads on NN tend to devolve into bad puns, discussions of beer, or games of Mornington Crescent. What does this say about us all?
Who knows, but to return to the comment you made ages up before the beer/phone deluge, Richard – on someone twittering something that you already saw on Twitter 3 days ago… is this any different from the same thing on blogs? When I go through my rss (which, call me oldfashioned, I try to do every day), I see so many “repeat” posts where someone has blogged about something that you already read about in the past days, weeks, sometimes even months. I always regard this as part and parcel of the internet – one of my reasons for wanting an aggregator like google wave (?) or streamosphere (?) is that it would “hoover up” any repeat post/twitter and layer it onto all the previous ones (a bit like a gmail conversation which I am assuming is part of the technology underlying google wave). I am not sure if streamosphere ever could really do this in practice because its a database – it can only capture the blogs/sites that are in it — but I could be wrong. What I want is a hoover that goes round the internet and slaps duplications together – not so that you don’t have to read them all (because everyone has interesting variants) but so that one can see them all together instead of in bits and pieces. If this were real-time, it could happen when you started writing something, so you could use previous context while writing your post/twitter (or just decide not to write it and retweet instead, or drop it).
Any minute now, Maxine, someone is going to say ‘semantic web’, and we’ll all be sorry.
Ana – What is happening here? How many beers have we had already?
The thing is that Richard is our financial partner, but lately the company has be neglected: Richard, it loses the time in boar hunting, and will carried several the premium beers of our business.
Furthermore he has been seen frequenting “Les Maison des girrafes” with an great number of barrels of beer of the highest quality, tested in our laboratories.
On the other hand has been devoted, as favorite sport: “Twitter-surfing”, until late in the night. On the other hand has created a new sport of target shooting with syringes Merck of Pyrex high quality of our laboratories, with explosive inside of syringe.
Additionally has been Dedicated to buy “watered stock- rubbish” in Wall Street. At this point we need another more responsible financial partner and we know that the person with this profile is Mr. Gee, in your genealogical tree be found eminent economists.
Hi!
Bored, Alejandro?
I try to send a message, but I can not.
will not let me sending, maybe Flag as inappropiate
You receivedst my email?
No my liege, I receivest not thy email.
(what the Henry are you talking about?)
I think Henry is a lovable person, tries to speak in Spanish, but has not yet learned well.
Therefore you Richard will remain as financial partner.
you like the idea?
Has anyone noticed how Alejandro and Wilson Hackett never comment in the same thread?
Oh! my god, fatal error have occurred in my short fiction story.
The theme is that Richard is our financial partner, but lately the company has be neglected:
Richard, it missing the time in that boar “hunting”:http://network.nature.com/people/rpg/blog/2009/08/17/on-kit-culture, and will carried at the hunt several premium beers of our business .
Furthermore he has been seen frequenting
“Maison des girrafes”: http://network.nature.com/people/rpg/blog/2009/07/12/on-chance-encounters with an great number of beer barrels (_high quality, tested in our laboratories_).
Richard has been devoted, at your favorite sport: link: “Twitter-surfing”: http://network.nature.com/people/rpg/blog/2009/07/10/on-twitter-redux , until late in the night. Also
on the other handhas created a new sport of target shooting with syringes Merck of Pyrex high quality of our laboratories, with explosive inside of “syringe”:http://network.nature.com/people/rpg/blog/2009/09/03/on-school-days-part-iiAdditionally has been dedicated to “watered stock” (stock rubbish) in Wall Street. In this point, we need another more responsible financial partner and exist a one person that assemble all this characteristic. The person with this profile is Dr. Gee, in your genealogical tree be found brilliant
eminent“economist”:http://network.nature.com/people/henrygee/blog/2009/09/14/reprehensible-incomprehensible-or-just-unpolishableSome spamming twonk just said
which just goes to show how stupid the spammers are on NN. I hope to attract a better class of moron, here.
Is not important, Ricardo Beca.
Sorry to disappoint you Richard. I mean, Ricardo Beca.
Don’t you bloody start.
Although I can’t understand either the words or the jokes, I’m laughing!
I’m glad we’re good for something.
Alejandro, try the jokes in Spanish. Just a thought.
In lighter news, it’s century time.
\o/
Alejandro, try the jokes in Spanish. Just a thought
I seem good.