“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” Posts in Twitter are called tweets.
Key Features
Tweets are limited to 140 characters. Twitter uses RSS feeds, like blogs and other news feeds. Because it emphasizes real-time broadcasts, it has rapidly become popular with mass media organizations like NPR, CNN, Fox, and ESPN. There are free and inexpensive downloadable applications for iPhones, Blackberries, and other mobile devices that enable you to subscribe to Twitter accounts and post to your own. You may embed links to web pages, images and videos through free third-party resources. Twitter trending topics can bring up-to-the-moment national and international news to your computer or mobile device.
Advantages
Twitter builds community among professionals and researchers through its "Follow" feature and enables you to share information quickly and simply with others. A tweet using a hash symbol (#) before a word in a post allows you to tag that post to a Twitter trending topic. During the June 2009 election in Iran, #iranelection drew realtime tweets from Iran and across the world.
Sample Uses
Instructors can use Twitter to push information to students about coursework, exams, calendar changes, and content updates. Instructors can tweet questions to students during a class to gauge how well students understand a particular topic. Students can use it as a "backchannel" discussion during classes. Programs and departments can push information to students and their families, to alumni, and the community. Examples at the UA: UA News, Office of Instruction & Assessment, UA Press
Getting Started Documents
Go to Twitter to create an account.
Outside Links
yfrog shares images and videos on Twitter; 12seconds records 12 seconds of video that uploads to your Twitter account; TinyURL! and bitly take long URLs and shorten them; OIA's "Twitter How-To"