Last week we discussed Twitter a bit more in class.
As we talked about it, I went online and asked those on Twitter at that time to chime in with their reasons why they used Twitter.
Hey, I’m in class … the students need to know … why do you use Twitter? is it a useful tool? convince them, please! :o) 04:44 PM September 23, 2008
I was amazed at the number of people that so kindly responded. Thank you all very much!
Here are their tweets. You can actually click on their photos and find their Twitter accounts to follow them, too. It really is a great list to start with as it contains journalists, PR students, faculty and practitioners all in one string of about 60 to 70 Twitter users. There are some multiple responses from a few people, so it looks like about 60+ people for you to follow. That’s a great starting point.
Some terrific insights in all of those responses. Key themes that seem to repeat are:
- networking
- following news
- finding breaking stories (before MSM gets them)
- opportunity to meet people you’d not have a chance to meet, otherwise
- connecting with the industry
- discovering new trends/ideas
- experimenting with new tools
- finding internships/jobs
- news organizations use Twitter to find leads
- and many more…
Since then, some great posts have gone up on that same topic.
Barbara Nixon shared her class exercise for Twitter. She also pointed to a post from Ron Jones at Search Engine Watch entitled Using Twitter as an Education Tool. Jones, in turn, pointed to David Parry, assistant professor of Emerging Media and Communications at the University of Texas at Dallas. Dave has his students using Twitter. You can also follow David Parry at academicdave on Twitter.
One of the responses even had a link to another post about why you should explore Twitter. It is from Kipp Bodnar: Microbloging: 10 Reasons Everyone (Especially Non-Geeks) Should Use Twitter. You can follow Kipp at kbodnar32 on Twitter, too.
I’m loving finding all of these examples of other schools (and “Non-Geeks”) exploring Twitter. Thanks for sharing them!
Want to use Twitter, but not through your browser? Try these various Twitter applications:
P.S. Don’t forget @journalisttweet as a resource to find journalists using Twitter. There is an RSS feed you may use to follow them in Google Reader (or another RSS reader) or you can click on the “Following” link in the sidebar and add them to your own account one at a time. There are some interesting examples of journalists using Twitter. @journalisttweet is a sampling of about 500 from the overall total of over 4,000 journalists using the service. You’ll find journalists from newspapers, television, radio, trade publications, online publications and much more.
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