If you are looking to connect with other gluten free people, I highly recommend twitter. Not only is twitter easy to use, but the gluten free networking is amazing! You can connect with gluten free bloggers, magazine editors, authors, awareness advocates, dieticians, nurses, doctors, chefs, foundations, support groups, and business owners. On twitter, there are also many parents with kids with autism who follow a gluten and casein free diet.
Whether you are looking for the latest celiac disease news and blog articles, gluten free recipes, food reviews, recipes free of multiple allergens, or for dining suggestions while traveling, you can find the information on twitter. The possibilities on twitter are endless. You can follow celebrities, television shows, restaurants, food recalls, and local, national, and world news sources.
What is twitter?
Twitter is a social network where people communicate by updates called tweets, which are limited to 140 characters. All updates show up on a public search, unless you choose to have your updates protected. There is no need to confirm friends. Anyone can follow you and you can follow them if you choose. You can also communicate privately with people who follow you and who you also follow through a direct message, which is like an email. Direct message is a great and easy way to communicate with people when you do not know their email address.
How to use twitter
For an extremely simple, amusing, and short video about twitter, watch "Twitter in Plain English". You send and reply to messages by starting a message with @username. At the end of messages, people add on hashtags #, such as #gfree for gluten free and #celiac. You can then search on twitter for all messages with #gfree to see realtime results. Most links that are shared in tweets are tinyurl, which is a way of easily shortening long links to fit within the 140 characters limit. For help with twitter, see the twitter support page. For an example of a twitter page and tweets, view my twitter page. While I use twitter daily, I only use facebook about once every week, so it is clear which one I like better.
The gluten free community
On Friday, April 3, there was a gluten free twitter party. I attended two of the three times for the party and it was a terrific gluten free discussion hosted by Bonnie Sayers from Autism Family with several panel members and amazing prizes. I found tweetgrid the best way to participate in the #gfree party. Here is a list of the some of the wonderful gluten free people on twitter. Join twitter and be sure to follow me - MarylandCeliac.
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