Today marks the official publication of Pistachio Consulting's book Twitter for Dummies. Truly a team effort between me, Michael Gruen and Leslie Poston, (and a supporting cast of dozens!) we hope we've compiled a useful and convenient reference to help people get the most of Twitter. Have folks around the office who still just don't get it? Give them a copy. As we've said many, many times, it's not at all unusual for Twitter not to make sense to people immediately. One of the single best things anyone can do is explain a specific use of Twitter that make sense to the person you are trying to convince. We included lots and lots of great… Continue reading

An earlier version of this article was published on FastCompany.com and is reprinted here with permission. If you can't fathom how Twitter can help your company, read on. When a student opened fire on the Virginia Tech campus, the school had no systematic way to alert those in harm's way. In the days that followed, organizations nationwide began asking, "Does my organization have the ability, in a few minutes, in the event of a crisis, to notify everyone involved?" What if fire, an earthquake, an explosion, or a hurricane rendered our email and phone systems useless? How would people receive information critical to their lives? Today organizations are considering how to systematically use micro-sharing, an emerging communications channel, made possible by Twitter and tools like it, to connect with the people… Continue reading

This is a guest post written by Wilfried Schobeiri. Anyone watching Twitter trends over the last few days would have noticed the hashtag #CNNFail up there toward the top. Why? Because CNN and other major news media failed to pick up and report on the severity of the turmoil surrounding the Iranian elections. In the mean time, Twitter's #IranElection, Tehran, Mousavi, Ahmadinejad trends were fire hoses of real-time information, videos, and pictures. I should disclose this immediately: I was skeptical about Twitter. I had many doubts about its viability as a social/news medium. Too simple. Too small. Too saturated with banalities. Status updates? "What's the point when you have Facebook?" I asked. But over time, the value of the connections and content streams Twitter facilitated was made clear to… Continue reading

This is a guest post written by Olivia Mitchell and has been reprinted from Speaking About Presenting with permission.

Twitter is now a reality at many conferences. Now the question is: should you display a live Twitter stream on a large screen so that everyone (not just the tweeters) in the audience can see it?

Having Twitter on a large screen can enrich the conference experience. Here’s a report from the Museums and

When Twitter changed its feature set to exclude a favorite opt-in feature (See All @ Replies), Twitter erupted. As one of the people affected, I wanted to get my thoughts on paper. I started a bit of a back and forth via email with colleague Alexander Howard about that change and the other changes Twitter made (email notifications, indexed search and URL tracking). In the spirit of Slate and other magazines, I thought we'd post our discussion about it here. ••• Hi Alex! I want to talk a bit about the recent changes in Twitter. There were 4 made this week that will impact the effectiveness of Twitter, and change its dynamic considerably over time: 1) Removal of the "See All @ Replies" Opt-In Feature 2) Delivery of Follower notices in HTML, with limited details… Continue reading

This post originally appeared on Adele McAlear's blog and has been published to the Touchbase Blog with permission. Ever wonder about the early days of Twitter? Long before @Oprah and @aplusk, many social media and technology early adopters hopped on board helping to spur the service forward. If you've ever wanted to do an historical study of Twitter, then I've got three services that will give you a snapshot of what it was like when you, or anyone else, were mere Twitter Hatchlings. When Did You Join Twitter tells you just that. Nothing fancy. But it's fascinating to see what dates some of the old school social media types joined. It appears October 24, 2006 is a landmark date for Twitter, attracting these… Continue reading

This is a guest post written by Andrew McAfee and was reprinted with permission from his blog. Twitter grew by 131% in March alone, and Oprah started tweeting last week (and already has about 175,000 followers), so it seemed like the right time to discuss this technology/service/phenomenon/whatever-it-is in my MBA course. Laura Fitton came to class on Thursday the 16th (thanks, @pistachio!), and we spent more time today talking Twitter.

These were classes when I could really sense that students were grappling with the material in a positive way. They shared both what they knew and what they did not, and worked together to increase their understanding of a complex, unfolding phenomenon.

I started off class today by asking if Twitter really was something new under… Continue reading

This is a guest post written by Simon Wakeman which was originally featured on his blog and has been reprinted with permission. We’ve been running @medway_council on Twitter for a few weeks now. One thing that I’m still unsure about is how councils should use Twitter’s concept of “following” others. People are choosing to follow @medway_council for their own reasons, and we are, of course, very happy that they have chosen to do so. But should @medway_council follow those people back? Should @medway_council follow other people who haven’t followed us? On my personal Twitter account (@simonwakeman) I follow people that I’m interested in hearing from. I look at everyone that chooses to follow me and if their bio looks relevant to me (PR, marketing, UK-based, possibly public sector) I’ll follow… Continue reading

It's okay to admit it. You're among friends. You've been on Twitter for a couple of months now and you still can't figure out what the heck all the fuss is about. It took me a while to "get" Twitter, too, but now I find it an indispensable part of my toolkit for gathering information and promoting my work. Here are some things to think about. The 140-character limit is liberating. Writing blog entries is a time-consuming task. I'm not the type who fires off one-sentence posts, so I like to put some thought into what I say on a blog. In contrast, Twitter's 140-character limit lends itself well… Continue reading

Readers of ReadWriteWeb no doubt appreciated the hashtag refresher contained in Sarah Perez' post, "What Does that Hashtag Mean? Tagalus Tells You." As growth in Twitter has exploded, conversations, interest and confusion over #hashtags have spiked as well. How could they not? The problem is that for all of those new users, the # signs inserted into Tweets make no sense. David Pogue helped a lot of them when he tweeted a link to hashtag.org, where hashtags are defined as "a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They're like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. Tagalus, the service Perez blogged about in her hashtag post… Continue reading