Twitter

Twitter –Shealagh

Twitter is like a mini-blog social network. It was created by Jack Dorsey in 2006. It is like an SMS (short message service) of the internet. Twitter is the answer to the question we ask each other everyday, “What are you doing?” It works by sending really short text messages called tweets. Tweets can be only up to 140 characters in length. Friends that follow you on Twitter are called “followers.”

Twitter is a brief and quick way of informally sharing information. It is less hassle than emailing or IM. Twittering also shares all of this information to many more people than you would regularly email or IM. You open up your circle of friends to an ever-growing community. You can send messages using the Twitter website directly, as a single SMS alert, or through a third-party application such as Twirl, Snitter, or the Twitterfox add-on for Firefox. (I personally have only used the website directly)

Your tweets are displayed on your profile page, on the home page of each of your followers, and in the Twitter public Timeline (unless you disable this in your account settings.)

You can receive tweets by visiting the Twitter website, IM, SMS, RSS, email or via a third-party application.

PROS Twitter is user friendly –sd Can be used from a computer, phone, or portable devices- sd It could be easy to send reminders home to parents of students- sd Only allows short brief messages- sd Can only allow followers that you accept-sd Can follow current news- sd You can follow celebrities (KM) It is fun to use (KM)

CONS Can only use 140 characters- sd Puts information out for a lot of people to see who may not need it or want it-sd Do not think it is really appropriate for school use- sd Cannot always believe the information- sd Tweets can give inappropriate information to some aged students- sd Easy to get side tracked and look at celebrity fun than homework assignments-sd There is a lot of useless information about people (KM)

Here is a video on Twitter in Plain English [|Twitter]