Twitter for Dummies (39 page)

Figure 13-13:
Amber Alert on Twitter for missing children.

Twitter and other forms of citizen journalism are changing the world for the better, but users need to fact-check, credit the proper sources, and flag those twitterers who are inaccurate or worse, deliberately misleading. While Twitter and the rise of the citizen journalist both augment and replace mainstream news, you must be vigilant and ensure that the news you’re spreading is true.

Tweeting accurate info

How do you credit a source on Twitter or assure people that the news you tweet is accurate? As much as possible, offer proof that your news is valid. Here’s how:

Include a link.
The most basic thing you can do is link to a reliable source or, if you can’t verify, post the item as a question, asking others to share verification. The BBC learned this lesson the hard way when they posted an unverified rumor during the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. Their page said Twitter was the source but did not link to a tweet that would support or deny its validity. Once BBC had reported the rumor, subsequent tweets linked to the BBC page, and the rumor persisted, where most Twitter rumors tend to die out.

Create a companion blog.
In this blog, you have more space to credit the sources of your news. Link to that blog in your tweets. Make sure to go into your blog after you send your tweets and credit each story wherever possible.

Build a network based on trust and continued reliable information.
Not only should you make sure that the people you follow and associate with are trustworthy, but you should also be certain that the people in your network feel the same about you.

Don’t underestimate the power of the retweet.
The retweet (where one your followers repeats your tweet for the benefit of her own followers) is critical to networking and viral spread. Retweets of your posts give them a level of validity because retweets prove what you say is worth repeating. Most third-party Twitter clients have built-in buttons next to each tweet in your stream that let you easily set them up for a retweet, and we suspect Twitter will add this feature soon.

If you retweet, try to credit the original poster.
Sometimes when retweeting, the 140-character limit means that you have to take out names or letters to make the message fit. Always make sure that you leave the name of the twitterer you are retweeting to acknowledge your source.

Gathering your journalistic tools

You can use these tools to prepare for your Twitter-inspired citizen-journalist moment:

A mobile phone that has a camera and/or video camera:
Most cellphones have at least the former these days. And make sure that you have a cellular data plan so you can send your photos.

Qik:
A free Web application (
www.qik.com
) that lets you record short, live videos and broadcast them for free online. It posts a link to Twitter so that your followers can view the stream live, and even chat, and the video posts to YouTube, as well as to the Qik site. Two different videos of pro-Tibet protests made it to the world from the 2008 China Olympics because of Qik, even though both videographers were detained.

Utterli:
A free program (
www.utterli.com
) that lets you record short, live audio and video files and then posts them to the Web, similar to a live audio podcast. It posts to Twitter, as well, and you can attach still photos and other articles to each audio or video file.

A Flip video camera:
A nice, affordable way to grab live video of an event while it happens, then post it to the Web. Pure Digital Technologies manufactures this video camera, but several other electronics companies (such as Kodak) make similar, pocket-sized video cameras.

An account on a free photo-sharing service:
These services include TwitPic and Flickr, which accept mobile uploads for sharing your still photos.

If you ever take live video or pictures of people, it should be common sense to get their permission or, if circumstances don’t require permission, to at least warn them that you plan to broadcast the images or post them online. Depending on where you are, it may be illegal to post those images without the subjects’ permission. If you intend to capture video or pictures for distribution online with regularity, consult a legal professional.

Part V

The Part of Tens

In This Part . . .

Like every For Dummies book, we include the Part of Tens in Twitter For Dummies. In this part, we highlight neat tools, services, and uses for Twitter that you may want to check out while you’re tweeting away.

Chapter 14

Ten Twitter Tools

In This Chapter

Organizing your Twitter world with the right applications

Getting down to business with the help of Twitter tools

Connecting your Twitter account to your other online accounts

You need the right tools to get the most out of Twitter. New tools, services, Web sites, and applications are created for Twitter users every day, so the list of tools that you can choose from is always growing. To help get you started, we want to tell you about a few of our favorite examples, which give you a fun sampling that will give you some sense of different ways you can use Twitter.

Each time we tried to come up with a list of the top ten tools, we realized it’s just not possible — too many great innovations are being built on Twitter’s “platform.” What is the best tool for you really depends on your needs, and, of course, popular new tools emerge all the time. Literally, because of this problem, Laura is working on a startup,
www.oneforty.com
, that will make it easy for anyone to find, use, and share the best Twitter-related applications and services. Stay tuned to that site for help making the most of your Twitter experience.

TweetDeck: Connecting with Many

www.tweetdeck.com

Type:
Desktop client

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application that gives you the tools you need to keep track of large numbers of people in your Twitter stream. (For more on Adobe Air, see Chapter 9.) It allows you to put people in groups, keep permanent search windows open, view your Facebook account (and post to it selectively, as well), keep track of who’s talking to you or about you, and much more. It does all this in a customizable interface.

Recent contender to the throne is Tweetie for Mac OS X (
www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac
) and iPhone (
www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone
), mainly because of the one-two punch of mobile plus desktop, combined with some favorite TweetDeck style features.

Seesmic Desktop/Twhirl: Managing Multiple Accounts

www.twhirl.org

Type:
Desktop client

Twhirl is owned by Seesmic, a video messaging company that has fully integrated its video service into the new desktop application for Twhirl. Twhirl is missing a few key features for managing (and listening to) many followers, but it makes up for its shortcoming in the ability to have multiple accounts open at the same time. As this book went to press, Seesmic was publicly beta testing its Twhirl replacement Seesmic Desktop, which offers a great deal of new functionality.

Twhirl offers ways to interact with some of your other favorite social services, such as identi.ca (
http://identi.ca
) or 12Seconds (
http://12seconds.tv
), Facebook (
www.facebook.com
), and FriendFeed (
http://friendfeed.com
), for example.

CoTweet: Corporate Tweeting

https://cotweet.com

Type:
Business dashboard

If you want a corporate solution that lets multiple users monitor and update a single account and displays all of your Twitter accounts in a single interface, you should look at CoTweet. Like the social media listening tool Radian6, CoTweet lets companies assign individual tweets to employees for follow-up. Still in
beta
(meaning that new features and functions are being added all the time), this service is hit or miss on features, but the planned feature set should take care of most of your company or organization’s Twitter needs, from keeping organized and letting more than one person maintain an account to scheduling tweets ahead of time.

Make sure that you have full disclosure in your profile somewhere if you have multiple people tweeting for your company or you have a ghost tweeter tweeting for you. For shared accounts, authors usually sign the end of their tweets with an ^ and their initials.

Speaking of disclosure, Laura advises both CoTweet and a service named TipJoy that appears in Chapter 15. She played no part in selecting which companies to profile in these chapters and, in fact, only found out which ones Leslie and Michael chose just before the book went to press. Both CoTweet and TipJoy are unique innovators in their areas and got into the book on their own merits.

Smartphone Clients Tweetie, PocketTwit, and TwitterBerry

http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone

http://code.google.com/p/pocketwit

http://www.orangatame.com/products/twitterberry

Type:
Smartphone clients

If you have a mobile phone, you may have trouble finding the perfect Twitter client. Even more frustrating, all carriers use different browsers and standards, making it impossible to find one client to fit all phones. Here are some of our favorites for each platform:

Tweetie:
If you have an iPhone, Tweetie is the way to go. It’s like having TweetDeck on your phone, in a slick iPhone interface. It also has a companion desktop client — an added bonus. (We talk about TweetDeck in the section “TweetDeck: Connecting with Many,” earlier in this chapter.)

PocketTwit:
For Windows Mobile phones that have touch screens, PocketTwit is made by Google Labs and offers several nice features, multiple-account management, and a nifty, avatar-included interface.

TwitterBerry:
The current most popular solution for BlackBerry devices, TwitterBerry works with BlackBerry’s proprietary interface, so you can easily tweet on the go. Laura whinges about how many basic Twitter features TwitterBerry lacks, but nothing great for the BlackBerry has taken its place. Yet.

Check your carrier’s data and text charges before using these services. Twitter may be free, but some of the attached services may come with hidden costs for use if your phone is not already on unlimited data.

Twellow: Finding People to Follow

www.twellow.com

Type:
Networking

Many directory sites have come and gone, but Twellow was the first. It doesn’t have the sexiest interface, but it has a fantastic database of easily searchable, accurate information about people, companies, and categories.

Use more than one solution to find followers if you want to get a more interesting and beneficial demographic.

FriendorFollow: Managing Followers and Followings

http://friendorfollow.com

Type:
Networking

This Web site lets you see whom you’re following, who’s following you, and which follows are mutual — all in a nicely tabbed, avatar-based grid. And you can fix any follower/following discrepancies right from the site interface.

Don’t unfollow people just because they don’t follow you back. Twitter doesn’t require you to follow someone back, and you never know whether that user might have just missed you. Try saying hi with an @reply to see whether you can get to know that person better.