first central texas new media tweet-up

tomorrow is the first central texas new media tweet-up and I am so excited.  I am on the board for this wonderful organization that is helping to bring more information on new media to central texas.  I will be writing in my next few blog post why I joined this board, why I think this group is important to our community, what this group plans to bring to our community.  I hope to see all my waco tweeple tomorrow night.

sign up for the tweet up

find out more about central texas new media

find out what a tweet-up is

the people who follow you on twitter

you don't have to be on twitter for very long before you realize that half the new people that follow you are wanting you to try their get rich quick schemes, well, my friend cj, one of the waco social media gurus, wrote a great blog post about just that yesterday; twits, you are on notice

twitter 401 -- sharing pictures on twitter

now that you are really getting into twitter and making some great twitter-friends, you are probably finding times when you want to share pictures with them. there is a very easy way to to this with twitpic.

1. go to twitpic.com and enter your twitter username and password and click on log in
   
2. you will see your twitter avatar and your bio from twitter, click on upload photo in the upper right-hand corner of the website
3. click on browse to browse to the picture on your computer that you want to upload, select the picture and click on open
   
4. add any message that you want to share and click on upload
5. twitpic then sends out a tweet from your account with your message and a link to your picture
6. when your twitter followers click on the link, they can see your picture and if they want, they can log into twitpic and add a comment on your picture
7. if they comment on your picture, the comment is sent out as an @[your twittername] reply to you with a link to the picture as well
   

what is #followfriday?

so, by now you've probably seen all the people on twitter tweeting out with the #followfriday hash tags on fridays and you may be asking yourself, what is this?

well, this is something that was started earlier this year by @micah on twitter as a way to show off his favorite tweeple (read @micah's original blog post on how and why he started it).  mashable also has a good post on this called "follow friday, the anatomy of a twitter trend"

basically all your do is send out a tweet listing your favorite people to follow using their twitter handle (@[twitter username]) and put the #followfriday hashtag in the tweet.  lately, I have enjoyed having a theme to my follow fridays like twittering couples and the people that I met at SXSW.  but most people just put down their favorite people to follow.

some tweeple have started writing blog posts with more information on why the have chosen their #followfriday tweeple, like this one by sonny gill or this list by mashable.  another interesting blog post is brian troy's "follow friday experiment".

and like everything else on twitter, their are tons of sites and apps to help you with #followfriday.  my favorite one is the twitter tag project.  all you have to do is go to the site and enter your twitter username and it will return the friends you should suggest for #followfriday.  I'm not sure how it works, but I think it has to do with who you tweet with most often.  one of the things that I like about it is that you don't have to put your twitter password in, it opens a new twitter window for you to send the tweet out in.

for more cool apps and sites for #followfriday, check out brian cray's blog post

twitter 303 -- tweet-ups

by now, hopefully you are probably really enjoying twitter and all the twitterfriends you are making and you may be looking for opportunities to meet some of them in real life. tweet-ups, meetings between two or more people on twitter, are a great way to do that, there are a couple of ways to find out about tweet-ups in your area:

1. ask your twitterfriends about tweet-ups in your area
2. search google for tweet-ups in your area
3. check out the social media breakfast site for social media breakfasts in your area
4. if you still can't find any tweet-ups in your area, you can always start your own: how to organize a successful tweet-up

twitter 302 -- twitter parties

in addition to the hash tags, one of the other things you have probably noticed on twitter are all the twitter parties. a good example of a twitter party is twitter mom's girls night out (#gno) that I participate in every tuesday night. you sign up on the girls night out website before the party and then you end all your tweets during the party with #gno. they usually have a topic and host and the party can be very fast paced once it gets started.

there are many more twitter parties, in fact, my twitter friend, @ResourcefulMom has created a site, TwitterParties.com, devoted to sharing all the information she has on the various twitter parties, click on her logo on the left to visit the site.

additional blog posts and articles on twitter parties:

• twitter parties and events explained
• how to host a successful twitter party
  
• rock on! the power of twitter parties
• twitterparties and #hashtags
• party on twitter

twittering 2nd graders??

when I talked to my mother earlier this week, she told me about a 2nd grade teacher who was using twitter in her classroom.  my mom of course was blind-sided by this, she barely gets facebook and can not even begin to comprehend twitter.

this immediately made me think of my boys in kindergarten and 2nd grade, while they are both every into what I am doing on-line (twittering, facebooking, and blogging).  it is my kindergartner who is really into it, you can read my blog posts; my social media butterfly and ed and his women on my the water is fine blog to see just how into it he is.

naturally as soon as I got a chance, I googled it and sure enough, a couple of 2nd grade teachers in maine are using twitter for their students to communicate.  after reading the article and looking up the twitter accounts for these teachers (which were both protected), I really started to think out this.

while I can definately see the learning value and the knowledge that the students will gain from this experience, I have some reservations about it.  for the most part, the twitter community is adults (I have found a few teenagers on twitter, but only a few).  my twitter profile is public meaning that anyone on twitter (or on the web for that matter) can see my tweets.  I use discrestion because of that, but there are things that I tweet that I don't think I would want my son or his classmates to read as part of a school assignment.  I am just wondering if there is another fourm or site that would be better suited for this?  what are your thoughts?

twitter wiki

I just found out that there is a twitter fan wiki with lots of great information from around the twitterverse, check it out:
http://twitter.pbwiki.com/

twitter 301 -- hashtags explained

This post has moved: http://digitalmediabutterfly.com/twitter-hashtags-explained/

tweeting couples for #followfriday

on twitter, people tweet out their favorite tweeple (twitter users) on friday with the hashtag #followfriday.  yesterday I thought it would be fun to share the couple that tweet for #followfriday.  once I started this, the couples seemed to come out of the woodwork.  here are the ones that I know of so far:

1. @michaellbrown and @carynbrown 
2. @scotters and @HSDistractions
   
3. @complicatedmama and @mrcomplicated
4. @rockson and @mrsrockson
5. @andreacook and @cookp
6. @worshipcity and @mrsworshipcity
   
7. @youngmommy and @RCYoung87 
8. @sashanicole  and @jrsmith1279
9. @surveysmith and @astrogirl426
10. @craigteich and @jennyred
    

please feel free to comment and add your twitter names if you are a tweeting couple

twitter 202 -- how to find people to follow on twitter

now that your twitter account is all set up, and you know who you want to follow on twitter, all you have to do is find some tweeple (twitter people) to follow. here is how I find other tweeple:

1. first, you can follow me, carynbrown (send me an @carynbrown tweet saying you are reading my "it's all geek to me" blog and I will follow you back)
2. follow back the people that follow you
3. look at the tweeple who your twitter friends are talking to and re-tweeting (remember you can click on the @[twitter username] to open up their twitter homepage)
4. go to the twittersearch page and put in things that you are interested in (i.e. knitting) to find other people tweeting about the same topics
5. when you are reading an article or a blog that you like, check to see if they have a link to their twitter page in the sidebar or at the bottom of the article
6. use twittergrader:
   follow twittergrader on twitter
   then go to the twitter grader webpage enter your twitter user name and click on "grade" to let them grade you
   they will suggest users for you to follow
   you can also click on "twitter elite" in the upper right-hand corner and search for people that are the top twitters
7. follow mrtweet on twitter, after following him for a week or so, he will send you a DM (direct message) on twitter with a link to a list of people to follow, you can go to the mr. tweet website for more information

other twitter search sites (I have not used these yet)

• who should I follow
• twitter local
• just tweet it

as usual, here are some links to other blog posts and articles on how to find people to follow on twitter:

• find new people to follow on twitter with twubble
• felicia day -- finding people to follow on twitter
• creative wisdom -- how to find people to follow on twitter
• tech life web -- how do I find people to follow on twitter
• social fishing -- 9 ways to find people to follow on twitter
• seo and tech daily -- how to find people to follow on twitter
• mashable -- the twitter followholic

twitter 201 -- who to follow on twitter

as promised, here are the rules that I follow when trying to decide who to follow on twitter:

1. they have to have a profile picture, I don't care if it's a picture of them, their dog, a piece of fruit, or a cartoon. as long as they have something other than the brown box that you get if you haven't uploaded a picture yet.
   
   
2. they have to have a bio. tell me a little bit about yourself, especially the types of things you tweet about. it's only 160 characters, that's not so scary.
   
   
3. if a person has both those things and I still can't decide if I want to follow them or not, I will click on the link and take a look at their blog. if I like their blog, I'll follow. if they don't have a link or a blog then I will take a look at their most recent tweets and decide.

here are some other blog posts from people on who they follow on twitter:

• how to follow 101
  
• practical 101s: tips for new twitter users
• follow fail
• who I follow on twitter
• deciding who to follow on twitter
• who to follow on twitter?
• choosing who to follow on twitter

twitter 103 -- twitter rules and twitter lingo

I know I said last week that I would help walk you through who to follow this week, but I want to go through this with you first. I will walk you through who to follow next week, I promise.

just like everything else, twitter has a few quirky rules that you should know about:

1. you can send a tweet (twitter message) to another twitter user by starting the tweet with @(their twitter username), for example, a tweet to me would be "@carynbrown you really are a helpdesk goddess." these tweets will show up in your twitter stream on your twitter home page and in that person's twitter replies. you can do this for anyone on twitter. also, any time you put the @(their twitter username) anywhere in a tweet, it will become a link that anyone reading the tweet can click on to see that user's twitter homepage.
2. you can send direct messages through twitter that will only be seen by you and the person you send the message to. to do this, start your tweet with d (their twitter username). the one rule on this is that the person you are sending the direct message to must be following you on twitter.
   to send a tweet to someone, you use @(their twitter username), with no space between the @ and their username and to send a direct message to someone, you use d (their twitter username), with a space between the d and their username.
3. there is a following limit on twitter, I have had a hard time finding the actual rules on this (this is the closest that I have found). from my experience, you can follow up to 2000 twitter accounts, but over 2000, you can only follow 120% of the number of twitter accounts that are following you (i.e. if you have 2000 twitter followers, you can follow 2400 twitter users). here is a link to the blog post I wrote when I hit this limit for the first time. there are a couple of other blog posts that I found on this limit: Twitter Doing Damage Control On False Follow Limit Rumor, TWITTER LIMITS FOLLOWING TO 2,000, Twitter’s 2000-Follow Limit Raises A Ruckus

you don't have to be on twitter very long before you figure out that twitter has a language all it's own. here are some links to more information twitter language:
mashable's twitterspeak
twictionary
twittonary
popular twitter terms

update on 21 march 2009: here is another good blog post I found today on clarifiying the twitter rules for newbies

twitter 102 -- getting your account all set up

as promised last week, I am going to work with you this week on getting your twitter account all set up. right now, your twitter page probally looks something like this:

I am sure that you are a very interesting person and tons of people will want to be your twitter friends, so let's get you a twitter page that reflects that!

1. first off, let's get some tweets out there. post a tweet about what you are doing or what you have done today. as we work through these next few steps, sporadically post some additional tweets so you will have something that is showing up on your twitter stream.
2. click on settings in the top right-hand corner.
3. make sure that your time zone is correct.
4. enter a url in the more info url field if you have a blog or other site that people can go to if they want more information about you.
5. in the one line bio field, enter 160 characters (or less) that tell people about you. this is a good way for other people to find you on twitter so be descriptive.
6. enter a location in the location field.
7. you can click the "protect my updates" checkbox if you want to protect your updates from showing up on your twitter page and in the public timeline. you will have to allow people to see your tweets.
   my personal position on this is to leave your tweets unprotected, that is the only way to really interact and make friends on twitter. just know that everything you tweet can be read by anyone on the web.
8. click on save.
9. you can click on the password tab to change the password you set, click on the devices tab to add your mobile phone, click on the notices tab to set up the notices you want to receive from twitter, and click on the design tab to change the theme (background design of your twitter page).
10. click on the picture tab, this is where you will upload the picture that will show up on your twitter home page and next to the tweets that you send out on your friends twitter streams (click here for my thoughts on profile pictures). click on browse and browse to the picture you want to use. select the picture and click on open. click on save.
11. click on home to return to your twitter home page. now you have a twitter page that better reflects you (see, doesn't that look better!).

look, I even have a follower already!
tune in next week and we will talk about how to decide who you want to follow on twitter. see you then.

twitter 101 -- what is twitter and how to create a twitter account

twitter is defined by wikipedia as:
Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can send and receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS,RSS (receive only), or through applications such as Tweetie, Twitterrific, and Feedalizr. The service is free to use over the web, but using SMS may incur phone services provider fees.


it is a great way to connect with others on-line and to form a community where you can share thoughts/ideas with others.


here's how to get started:

1. go to the twitter website at www.twitter.com .
2. click on get started-join! in the green box at the bottom of the screen.
3. enter your full name, your username, your password, and your e-mail address and type in the words from the captcha.
4. click on create my account.
5. you can then click on any of the services you use to see if your friends from your e-mail contacts are on twitter, click on the service you use and enter your e-mail address and password, then click on continue. you can also click on skip this step at the bottom of the screen.
6. you can select any of the famous twitters you want to follow and click on finish or click on skip this step at the bottom of the screen.
7. you now have your twitter account, see, wasn't that easy!!

check back next week and I will walk you thru getting your twitter account all set up!

CHANGE YOUR TWITTER PASSWORD!

twitter got hacked today and is sending out bogus direct messages from some tweeple's (twitter people) accounts.  while no one seems to know what started this, the only way to ensure that your account is safe is to change your twitter password.  unfortunately will all the twitter apps out there, most of the people on twitter (myself included) are giving their twitter passwords out a little too freely.  chris brogan wrote a great post today with step-by-step instructions to change your twitter password.  here is the link to his blog post, it's great and all the tweeple out there should read it!
Log Into Twitter and Change Your Password -- Chris Brogan

creating podcasts

my brother in law asked me last night about creating/distributing a podcast.   I twittered the question out and as usual, my twitter friends gave me some great responses!  here are the links that I got:

librarian and information science news -- podcasting section
youtube video on podcasting
podcasting for dummies book

TalkShoe.com -- an online community/service that helps you create podcasts

thanks to @michelletrent, @stephenk, @onegate, @dananner, @nikkimk and all my other great twitter friends for all the suggestions.  as I have said many times before, you guys ROCK!!

twitterberry -- it's twitter for your blackberry

I do always jump into things with two feet! so a few days ago, when one of my twitter friends put out a request for someone to write a post on his blog about twitterberry, I quickly put my name in the hat (I don't know what I would do without my twitterberry). here is a link to my post on incslinger's blog!

http://simonsalt.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/guest-post-twitterberry-caryn-brown/