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Internet 101: Managing Your Online Persona with Twitter (Part 1)
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Screenshot: Twitter.com
In the coming weeks, I am going to publish a series of articles showing you how to manage your online 'social' persona. This week, we start with our first series with managing your online persona with Twitter.
For those who may not be members of the site, Twitter is billed as a real-time update engine. It allows you to post to the world status updates in 140 characters or less. Established in late 2005, the service has taken off in popularity since late 2007. The service has proven very valuable in disseminating information in all arenas, such as entertainment, sports, social justice, charity, technology, and general socialization. The wide range of usefulness of content ranges from entries about emergency plane landing in the Hudson River, updates from the resistance over the Iran election and less serioues information like Perez Hilton's alleged assault by someone in the Black Eyed Peas camp and the race for 1 million followers. In between all of this is a network of millions of users whose posts answer one question: "What are you doing?".
Connections on Twitter on pretty much a public "opt-in" style. Your published "tweets" are part of the public timeline as are many other people's updates. Some people may see it looking at the public timeline, or by searching on Twitter Search. In turn, they end up clicking on a tweet, seeing your profile, and following you. If you see someone you'd like to follow, you can follow them as well. This helps to build connections with people that follow you and those that you follow. The key to maintaining meaningful connections is by staying on topics you are knowledgeable about, conversation with those that follow you/you follow, and generally being a good netizen on the network.
From there, there all types of customs and buzzwords associated with actions on twitter. When replying to someone, you do what's called an "@reply". So, if you want to reply a message to me publicly, you would start or include in your message @jaysonjphillips. This message can be seen on the public feed, and I would see it was well in my feed. To send someone a private message, you do whats known as a DM, or direct message. to do this, you start your message with d then the person's screenname (ex. d jaysonjphillips). This message is NOT on any public feed, and unless manually copy/pasted into a regular message, is only seen by the person it is sent to. Another custom on twitter is the retweet, or RT. If you are using the twitter.com site, you start your message with RT, followed by the format for an @reply (ex. RT @jaysonjphillips) and then paste the message in its entirety. This is useful for say someone posts a profound message, like "Examiner.com is one of the best sources for knowledgeable authors of content". If I posted that, and you wanted to re-post my message you would do:
RT @jaysonjphillips Examiner.com is one of the best sources for knowledgeable authors of content
This way, I get the credit for being cited as the author of the message and you also spread a message or topic you believe.
In part 2 of this series, I will dig deeper into connection building via organic communication as well as introduce new topics such as the Twitter #hashtag. In the parts that follow, I will delve into all the desktop/online applications for managing your twtter feed, tools for managing your twitter statistics and popularity, and privacy concerns for managing your reputation while using twitter. Thanks for reading!
Twitter.com
www.twitter.com
TechCrunch: "Plane Crashes In Hudson River"
www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/15/plane-crashes-in-hudson-first-pictures-on-flickr-tumblr-twitpic/
Huffington Post: "Iran Election Twitter Feeds"
www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/14/iran-election-twitter-fee_n_215330.html
Mashable: "Perez Hilton Assualted"
www.mashable.com/2009/06/22/perez-hilton-assaulted/
You should also follow me on twitter - click here.
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