Tuesday, April 10, 2012

To Tweet Or Not To Tweet


I am trying to figure out what Twitter is all about. I have my account at @NinAndrew, but I don't know what I am supposed to tweet . . .

5 comments:

Hannah Stephenson said...

Dude!! Twitter has been so very helpful for me.

If you have questions, feel free to shoot me an email about it (hannahjstephenson[AT]gmail[DOT]com)...I'd love to tell you how it is useful to me, and how I use it.

I will tell you....it takes a week or two to become comfortable with Twitter and to learn how to "read" it easily. At first, I used it as a broadcasting tool ("new post up at my site"). It is so much more than this. Mostly, I use it as a tool for conversation and community-building.

Think of it as a convention of people you love and find fascinating....all these different exhibits, panels, booths, talks, conversations, dinners, etc.

The best way to start is to find people who you think use Twitter well, and to follow them, and notice what they share and how.

Laura said...

I often use it to note interesting bits of things I am reading (mostly poetry though I did go through a Murakami phase) and try to connect with people who inspire me. Seeing connections and synchronicities is fun.

Lists help organize specific interests to you can dip into the news and/or activists lists to see what's going on. Watching news evolve (and sometimes devolve) on twitter can be fascinating.

I've found links there to information and writing that I may not have otherwise stumbled across. The virtual wakes for Adrienne Rich & Etta James were uniquely valuable.

Good to see you over there.

Laura said...

I often use it to note interesting bits of things I am reading (mostly poetry though I did go through a Murakami phase) and try to connect with people who inspire me. Seeing connections and synchronicities is fun.

Lists help organize specific interests to you can dip into the news and/or activists lists to see what's going on. Watching news evolve (and sometimes devolve) on twitter can be fascinating.

I've found links there to information and writing that I may not have otherwise stumbled across. The virtual wakes for Adrienne Rich & Etta James were uniquely valuable.

Good to see you over there.

Nin Andrews said...

Hi Laura,

Ohmygod, I LOVE Marukami. I am a total sucker for him. I loved his last book--it's like going for a long swim in some kind of alien liquid.

And I do find political things on Tweets. But the literary side is baffling to me.

Thanks Hannah, thanks so much!
I hope you got my email. Who knows if I typed it correctly, but I would love help! Please email me if you don't get my own email. ?

Robert Lee Brewer said...

Hey Nin,

How I approach anything new is to kind of poke around and see what everyone else is doing first. Then, I kind of take a stab or two at it.

If I don't catch on immediately, I usually keep poking it with a stick for a while until the light bulb clicks.

That said, a lot of people seem to use Twitter in different ways. Some use it exclusively for conversations; some use it as a way to share information (for instance, I came to this blog post from Twitter); and others use it as a way to collect information. Heck, I've even used random tweets as poetry prompts when I've felt like writing--but had no specific direction.

The main thing is that you really can't screw it up. Well, unless you get drunk and start tweeting a lot of inappropriate things.