Jerry Katz:  Twitter 101 — A Summer School Lesson

Well, after reading and seeing lots in the media the past few weeks about Twitter, I thought it might be time for my perspective of this “tweet” business. First of all, yes, of course I have a Twitter account. And Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and a few others that aren’t in the spotlight right now. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t sit around all day sharing my favorite foods, games, cars or sending little cyber hearts and drinks to my friends. But enough of that, let’s get to Twitter.

I think what interests me the most is the skill levels of various users. For example, Governor Bob Riley’s Twitter page is more customized than Congressman Mike Rogers.

Now the Congressman’s page is red, white and blue, but the Governor has his picture. The governor also tweets smarter than Mike. When you’ve only got 140 characters to use, pick them carefully.

For example, the congressman instead of saying “I’m on my way to a meeting with;” should say “meeting with” and save him 20 valuable characters for real information. The candidates for governor are in on the action too. Republican hopeful Robert Bentley and Democrat Artur Davis both tweet pretty well, but Bentley’s Twitter page is more customized. I suspect other candidates are there, so go and look for your favorites and follow them.

Now Twitter, as a social network, initially was people telling us what they were doing “all the time.” I’m waking up, having breakfast, taking a shower, walking the dog, going to lunch, and on and on. And to be honest, I just don’t want that much detail of someone’s life. I know it makes me sound uncaring, but that’s the way I feel.

As an experiment, I did a search for Opelika. Only three Twitter sites came up. One was my personal blog tweets, another a group selling Avon and one other. When searching Auburn there were a ton more, but that brought up Auburn, Calif., and others. You get a smaller number when you refine the search.

I hope local business will get on the bandwagon soon and “tweet” special deals to followers like “Buy a coffee & get a free bakery treat for the next two hours.” Now I’d follow that site. Heck, even CNN is following tweets of some in reporting the news. I would offer a word of caution. Know the person or source tweeting you. Real or fake news, both tweet the same way.

Now you can have tweets sent to your phone as a SMS text message (standard text rates apply), follow them on your Twitter page, or even download an application for your smart phone (I have this on my Blackberry), which gives you the same info at the Twitter page, but there is no extra charge since it’s part of your data package. And one final note, if you’re reading this on the OA News Web site, you can even share the article automatically with Twitter.

Til we tweet again! Enjoy your summer!

Jerry Katz lives in Opelika and writes a column for the Opelika-Auburn News.