Search Results for: twitter

What Happens When Twitter Dies?

Posted by Dean Shareski on in linkedin, networks, twitter 0 Comment

I’m not really in a position to understand all that’s happening over at Twitter. I mean I realize Elon Musk bought it and seems to have the desire to change the platform and many feel it will either implode or turn into something they don’t want to support. But I don’t yet have an opinion. It’s partly because I’m not sure I care.

That might sound weird for someone that was around for as long as anyone I know. I joined the platform in January 2007. It was barely 6 months old. There was no such thing as social media or at least we didn’t call it that. Twitter was a major accelerator for network building for me. But as this all was happening, most of us had no understanding or intentionality of how we would use it. We were a bunch of educators playing around. I say educators because, at the time, that’s about all we’d see. The first 3-5 years of Twitter were the glory years for me. I created a network and made friends. This is one of the first things I wrote about Twitter. It was mysterious. It was innocent. It was fun. This post sums … Read the rest

Twitter as a Creative Outlet

Posted by Dean Shareski on in fun, twitter 4 Comments

It’s no secret if you follow me on twitter I don’t take it all that seriously. In case you don’t know what I mean, I created this video I sometimes share with new followers warning them of my intent.

While most educators talk about twitter as a great place to develop a personal learning network and even as a Professional Development resource, I enjoy the opportunity to be creative. The constraints of 140 characters is fuel for creativity. When you’re sharing a link or resource, the process is pretty straightforward. But when you’re trying to communicate something of more depth or even tell a story, those constraints make you work hard. With any tool, it’s important to understand and appreciate both the limitations but also the affordances. Real time interaction is powerful feature. This is one of the reason chats are so popular.

I like trivia games. A few years back I tried to play a version of “name that tune” on twitter. I would upload a few clips to a storage site and then post them to twitter using the #namethattune hashtag. It’s always interesting to see how various people happen to be online and really get into … Read the rest

Archiving Twitter

Posted by Dean Shareski on in geeky, twitter 2 Comments

When I first started using twitter 7 years ago, it was largely viewed as a frivolous space of drivel. For many it still is and I’d be the first to admit much of the time spent there is exactly that and I’m as much of a contributor to that as any. And yet….

 

For a long time I viewed twitter as a throw away tool, conversations and streams of consciousness that wasn’t worth saving. As time evolved I found myself searching through past tweets to recall a salient thought, link or idea that would often lead to deeper thinking. I’m still amazed at how many times I remember a tweet that is several years old and thinking about what may have transpired in my thinking as a result. These tiny documentations of life and ideas are much more meaningful than I would have ever expected 7 years ago. You would think after accumulating over 80,000 tweets that once in a while, there’d be something useful there. 😉

There were a few tools that sort of helped make this easier but most were clunky and unable to find tweets that were more than a few days old. About a year … Read the rest

The Impact of Twitter on Blogging

Posted by Dean Shareski on in Blogs, twitter 3 Comments

After a recent post by Graham Wegner, who I've been reading for at least 5 years,  and the ongoing thoughts I have about the impact of twitter on many things, I decided to send out a quick poll…via twitter.

Have you or do you blog regularly? How has twitter impacted this?

What I thought I would see was quite different than what I got. My contention has been that twitter is taking away from blogging. Twitter offers an easy way for people to participate and has a more immediate, instant community. Twitter was snack food, blogging represented a full meal. Blogging can be extremely time consuming for many as they languish in the pursuit of eloquence and accuracy, holding true to the traditional notion of publishing. Fortunately for me I've neither worried about any of those things as my few readers can attest to. 

While the interactions on my blog hasn't decreased, I know more and more of you visit because of links on twitter as opposed to the good old fashion RSS feed. That's a poll for another time. I suppose it doesn't really matter how you find information or where you share but I do relish reading … Read the rest

A week sans twitter

Posted by Dean Shareski on in Personal, twitter 0 Comment

So I took a week off of twitter. Outside of some DMs that came to my inbox I never checked it. I peeked at Facebook a couple of times, again, only to respond to a few messages.

What did this teach me? Not much. I’d like to report how it reawakened my senses to the wonders of nature or gave me time to find a cure for cancer or some other noble endeavor. I suppose it did help me focus on my family a bit more but I’d like to think I’ve been working on being better with that anyway.

For me twitter has always been like your favorite social gathering place. Be it a coffee shop, pub, church, community center or neighborhood twitter is where I drop in and shoot the breeze. It’s mostly for the trivial but occasionally something of immediate value, but in truth, never a waste of time.

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Breaks from any routine is good but I don’t, and have never looked at twitter as a negative experience. I realize many struggle with its perceived invasiveness and superfluous chatter. I like what Jeff Pulver said at the #140edu event last week. He reiterated how valuable and human … Read the rest