Evan Milberg: Comm 361

This chapter focuses on microblogging in the field of journalism with an emphasis on Twitter.

Intro to Microblogging

Microblogging sites let you post brief text messages (usually up to 140 characters) on the Web. The interesting part of microblogging is that you can post these messages through a mobile device, a computer, instant messaging, e-mail, and other ways.

Twitter is the most popular microblogging service. Some of the reasons it has become so popular are its ease of publishing and consuming, along with brevity of messages. There is also a sense of connectivity of updates that makes people feel connected to each other.

Why is Microblogging Important?

The major thing that sets apart microblogs from regular blogs is that microblogging happens in real  time. As it relates to journalism, readers want to know what is happening right now! While this may take some readers away from Google, Google has countered with its own real-time technology, Google Wave.

In this age of journalism, every venue for print media is augmented by microblogging or other forms of Web 2.0. With Twitter, journalism becomes interactive.

Limited posts to 140 characters is a great tool for teaching journalists as well. With limits on how much you can write, it challenges journalists to get to the point as quickly as possible.

Microblogging has become an effective medium for breaking news, building a target audience, and marketing a publication’s brand.

Using Twitter

Just like with regular blogging, before you create a microblog, you need to know what your purpose for the microblog is. In the field of journalism you could either try to build a community of readers, create a network of people who follow a specific topic, create a network with other journalists, or seek marketing opportunities.

It’s important to undertsand the language of Twitter. The most common type of communication between two people with Twitter is the @ symbol. Everyone on Twitter has a Twitter ID, and when you insert the @ symbol before a person’s ID, that signifies that you are sending a public message to that person. If you want the message to the private, you can send a DM, or direct message, similar to e-mail.

Another common occurance on Twitter is the retweet tool, which allows you to show people who follow your tweets something that someone else said.

Building a Twitter Network

You could say that the follower is the unit of measurement for Twitter success. However, you cannot simply post things on Twitter and expect millions of people to read it instantaneously. You have to start by building a network.

Before anyone can follow you or know you exist, you have to follow other people first. Twitter is like an RSS feed, except instead of following one source, you are following a bunch of people in real time as they post.