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Hi, y’all.
Not a lot of brilliant thoughts in my head today. A few days of rainy weather in Austin means I didn’t have a lot of spoons. But we need the rain. My garden will be happy; I picked the first tomato from it the other day. If the current state of our plants is any indication, we’ll be overflowing with cucurbits in some weeks. My household has so many plants from this family that they overflow from our plots to line the privacy fence along one side of the back yard.
Tomorrow I’ll be part of the Occupy Supply webinar about social media and activism. I’ll be talking a little about what makes a good blog post and how to get the word out through sites like Twitter & Facebook. I enjoy talking about twitter and social media in general, so I am always happy to answer questions here in these open threads.
I plan to cover a few intermediate topics, but if you’re looking for a basic introduction to Twitter check out the Twitter 101 Guide I wrote for Occupy Austin. It includes a simple introduction to using Twitter, but focuses on using SMS text messages from your phone. This is the simplest and perhaps most accessible way to Tweet, because all you need are unlimited text messages. It is also the most reliable, working even when wireless networks become overloaded or their signal is weak.
What’s on your mind today? This is the latest open thread.
18 Comments
Adjusting to limited spoons is certainly hard … hoping for hot sun tomorrow!
Oh how I loved the spoon story! Please forgive my ignorance here, but does rain affect your condition, sort of like, say, my arthritis? (You mentioned that you didn’t have a lot of spoons)
Funny. I absolutely love twitter. But you want to know the kicker? You don’t? Well here it is anyway: I don’t text. That’s right. Call me old, but I just want a phone that rings. I don’t need any of that three-way, hije-dije-fanoidenheeden (a word my son and I made up for anything weird that we can’t figure out)
My spoon is too big/I am a bannana:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJYxCSXjhLI
If there’s enough spoons & I feel well enough I’ll drop in on the MoveOn Bank of America protest tomorrow.
Definitely also sending vibes for sun and more spoons in the bouquet!
I remember these from somewhere. Thanks for this CS.
Always keep you spools clean, too.
I have fibromyalgia, and I find that pressure changes & wet weather do seem to make me achier and reduce the number of spoons I have available.
I focused on SMS because of its accessibility to the people on the ground who I am trying to introduce to the medium, but I definitely hear from people in your position too. What do you do most on Twitter?
Not that fond of Twitter. Far too much inane background noise.
Oh and Loving You Has Made Me Bananas.
I applaud you for the work and for the writing that you do, given your painful condition. Now I can better understand and appreciate the spoon metaphor, so thank you so much for having the courage to share this.
I got into twitter during the Egypt situation. Sultan was one of the first people I followed, and I was absolutely blown away by the real-time delivery of the news. Twitter was like…a news revolution, or like using a computer for the first time. I search topics in the search box for news, often looking to twitter before, say, google’s news. For personal reasons, I do not use or care much for Facebook. I tweet my writing, usually only one time. I am interested in learning more, because I tweet things that I find interesting, but at the same time, I do not want to annoy people…I am sure there is some kind of etiquette, I cannot wait to hear it. I have self-learned, for example, to lighten up on made-up hashtags.
Thanks again for sharing, Kit, and I wish sun for you, and lots of spoons.
Far out!
Clarify: I have a Facebook page, but I rarely visit it. I prefer twitter.
I prefer twitter as well – and find I’ve made some really fascinating friends there who I learn so much from.
Facebook I find a chore actually – I use it to check in with a few family and friend contacts but otherwise, meh.
Interesting. I prefer Facebook since I do have some control over who I have as contacts etc. Oh and something I do not feel I have much control over with Google+.
I have a fairly ‘transparent’ life, there’s not much I mind talking about & I am happy to share in most cases.
I talk about Egypt a lot when I do my basic intro to Twitter classes in person. It’s a great example that most people I teach can relate too about how Twitter is used & how it informs the world if we listen.
I usually tweet my writing a couple times, and then I’ll bring it up again if it is appropriate in a Twitter exchange, or if I get a really juicy comment or conversation going on my blog. I think people expect a small amount of repeat traffic on Twitter because of its nature as a ‘stream’ — most people just dip into it to see what’s happening, rather than trying to read everything that has ever been said since the last time they logged in. You might decide to read every new post on MyFDL, for instance, but people rarely do that on Twitter once they reach a moderate number of followers. So RTs and the like really do help a message gain traction. Try to phrase it differently when you do a repeat, or use a different set of hashtags when appropriate, and you might reach a different audience.
The greater control over Facebook is both its benefit and its curse. It creates more privacy (or its illusion anyway) in cultivating a circle of friends. And the more close-knit nature of Facebook means you might have a greater trust or level of personal involvement when someone sends you a message.
But the open nature of Twitter is the reason I focus on it most in my citizen journalism efforts, and why it was so important in Egypt & related uprisings. A message can’t go viral as easily on Facebook, and if it does you can only track it as far as your friends network allows. Contrast that with a tweet of mine being picked up by @OccupyWallSt (150K followers) or @YourAnonNews (500K followers) and you’ll see a message that travels around the world.
I use FB to keep up with events and to generate blog traffic (it’s good for that in my case). But I enjoy the conversations I have on Twitter more. Facebook around here seems more drama prone than Twitter, but that’s not true everywhere — I see plenty of Twitter drama coming out of other occupations (like Oakland).
Good information, thank you. I have read about the short half-life of twitter, that makes it okay to tweet your writing, say, a couple of times a day. I balked a bit at first, with the 140-word character limit, but, it is actually perfect for me now- it fits in with my short attention sp.
I will also follow your advice about the, sort of end of the week summary. I’ll have to look back, but you mentioned something about a concise highlight summary of weekly writing, that I found helpful.
Yes! I have found it helpful to repeat a couple highlights at the end of the week. If I post a few times on my blog that week, on Sunday I try to tweet out some of the best again so people relaxing on their weekend might read some posts they missed during their busier days.
I’ve fallen out of this habit myself lately, but it seems to generate some attention (traffic, RTs, mentions…) when I do.