Why IST Students Should Use Twitter
I’ve been seeing more and more IST students jumping onto Twitter recently (I won’t name them here but you can find some of them on my “following” list). Twitter is essentially a “microblogging” platform, and it can be described as a unique combination of the following elements: social network + blogging + away message + instant messaging + email + feed reader. If you’re not familiar with it, you’ll really have to sign up and see for yourself. I’ve been a great fan of Twitter and I do see it reaching a “tipping point” in the near future, despite David Adewumi’s most recent blog post arguing against its mainstream adoption.
The following is just a few reasons IST students should use Twitter:
- Unify the IST community - Go beyond the limited contacts within the classroom/club setting and connect with other students that have common interests. I envision an IST tweetsphere that acts as a lobby, where you can listen in to seek conversations that might interest you. You can identify and learn a lot more about an individual through their daily tweets.
- Discover events - There are many IST-related events that slip through the cracks of being noticed on IST2U and Facebook events. Twitter is one of those tools that can provide a coincidental glimpse at an interesting upcoming event.
- Classroom tweetphere - Discuss and reflect on assignments and content for a particular class with classmates. This is obviously much better when the professor becomes involved and leads the conversations. Professors and TA’s can use Twitter to receive instant feedback. The results could potentially be more valuable than an SRTE.
- Ask questions and find answers - There’s a wealth of untapped expertise within our community. Twitter is a great way to broadcast casual questions to the masses and receive quick answers.
Add your twitter link in a comment below. If you don’t have an account, the registration is quick and easy, and it never hurts to try it out. Just like most other web 2.0 applications out there, the value of Twitter is only actualized when there are enough users.
Tags: twitter
Categories: Opinion
3 Comments, Comment or Ping
Dan Flynn
Twitter is fun!
http://twitter.com/smileydan88
May 3rd, 2008
David Adewumi
Daehee,
I still hold fast to what I argued last night — that Twitter is very useful for micro-communities, such as “IST community” but it’s not a useful mainstream tool, as in if you’re following all of your Facebook friends, the signal/noise ratio would be completely out of whack.
Good for micro-communities but still not a mainstream tool, although I didn’t say it CAN”T go mainstream, just saying that just because bloggers love it doesn’t mean it WILL go mainstream.
your intended use of Twitter for the micro community of IST higlights my point, and what Mark brough up last night as the “long tail”
May 3rd, 2008
Brendan Falkowski
Twitter gets more visits than Gmail from me these days. I love it.
http://twitter.com/falkowski
May 4th, 2008
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