Do you Twitter? Meme

[Matt Herzberger]

I just read Seth Meranda's blog post and it got me to thinking that there are prob quite a few higher ed people that could follow each other on there.

So what is your twitter name?

http://twitter.com/mherzber

[Joy]

After listening to Mark's early session yesterday about having a personal and professional twitter account, I created this one >> http://twitter.com/joyscoble

If you want my personal one it is just ask as I have it set to private.

J

[Kris Martin-Baker]

I've got a personal one also, same deal - if you want to follow that one just ask ;) I figure most of you here don't care what I'm making for the kids for dinner

[Nick Catto]

Wow, I'm really stoked with all of the back channel communications the higher ed group produced during the eduweb conference

[Kyle James]

Just to add everyone who was on twitter either at or virtual at eduWEB 2008 conference is on this blog post about twitters at eduWEB 2008

A lot of them are on this list, but thought it needed to be listed here...

[Jay Collier]

For anyone who's going to the Campus Technology conference next week, the Twitter hash appears to be: #camptech08.

My work has been changing from a focus on the media (i.e. Web) to knowledge and learning, in general, and how that is supported across media.

I am looking to meeting some of you there.

[Mark Greenfield]

Does anyone know if Twitter or any of the Twitter tools offers something similar to the "channels" on Jaiku?

[Jay Collier]

I think that's the same as a hash with Summize, which is now Twitter search.

From Jaiku: From any Jaiku interface you can post to a channel by prefixing your message with the channelname. Example: #jaiku Hello everyone! But, you have to officially request the #channel.

So, with Twitter, you can type #eduweb2008 anywhere in any tweet, and then go to Twitter search and enter the hash. The results are, in essence, a channel. The results generate an RSS feed with notifications when there are new entries in that channel.

The nice thing is that, rather having to request a #channel (as in Jaiku), Twitters channels are community managed folksonomy. I just searched for a Campus Technology conference "channel" and didn't find one, and so "claimed" the #camptech08 channel. Now, I'll see if anyone posts ...

However ... I'm new to this, so there may be things I'm missing ...

[Anne Petersen]

You're right, Jay.

As far as I know, the use of the hashes also came about from Hashtags.org--on Twitter as @hashtags, of course-- which we were using before Summize was popular (and well before it was bought by Twitter).

Hashtags (the service) became pretty much obsolete, though, when Twitter turned off some of the features that it used to index Tweets. As you can see from their site, the last Tweets they've indexed are from almost a month ago now.

[Jay Collier]

Well, you were the one who answered my earlier question about this, so I'm relieved to be "right" ;)

The nice thing about Twitter search/Summize is that ANY term, preceeded by any character, can become a "channel" with its own RSS feed.

This is the very development that changes Twitter from a "where-are-you" vanity tool into a useful service that supports community tagging, a la Delicious.

That said, this whole conversation is in a walled garden (Ning) in the same way that a parallel conversion is in another walled garden (Facebook). How do we get our intellectual work out of here! I want to get out into fresh air!

[Anne Petersen]

So I was. I always forget who I lend a hand to on there because it happens so frequently. I've found Twitter a great source for quick "how-to" questions, so of course I help others out the same way. ;)

Emphatically agreed on your other two points. I've been having a long-running debate with a friend who doesn't "get" Twitter (she's also in higher ed, albeit on the learning design side), and I really need to make these points to her. You did so very nicely and succinctly here, and it's a feature a lot of people don't find or use if they're just starting out over there (unless, like many at #eduweb2008, that's how they were introduced).

And while Ning does require a log-in to participate, it does have its own RSS feeds, so I would say that its walls are nowhere near as bad as Facebook's. Plus it's public, so people can at least read along without a log-in.

[Jay Collier]

You know, I thought this group required a log-in, and that the RSS feeds were authenticated. Cool!

So I wonder how quickly does Google picks up these threads I'll do some tests ...

In the meantime, this thread is now bookmarked on Delicious, tag highedweb. Don't use that tag very often!

[Mark Greenfield]

Jay - I think Google picks these up pretty quickly. I'm amazed how visible this site is in Google. My discussions and "my page" show up in the first page of search results when you Google my name. Just shows how "search engine friendly" social media can be.