Twitter Tips: Today’s Must-Have Tool for Citizen Journalists

By Amy Gahran,
I, Reporter

When a major earthquake struck Sichuan province, China, on May 12, 2008, the very first reports came from cell-phone-powered eyewitnesses in the affected region. Before the ground even completely stopped shaking, people were firing off text messages announcing the quake. Some of those messages went to a popular social media service that integrates easily with both cell phones and computers: Twitter.

Once word of the Chinese quake hit Twitter, the world took notice. In fact, according to a detailed analysis by Search Engine Land, the news broke on Twitter a full three minutes before even the US Geological Survey’s Earthquake Center announced the quake.

From those first moments, Twitter users around the world were instantly sharing quake-related news, resources, and personal accounts. In fact, for several hours famed blogger Robert Scoble became a one-man China quake info clearinghouse, funneling information to his more than 25,000 Twitter followers.

Similarly (but on a smaller scale), on May 22, 2008, a large tornado struck Windsor, Colo., just 50 miles from my home in Boulder. I was first alerted to my local severe weather via Twitter - by a friend who lives in California! I then used a combination of Twitter and mainstream news sites to track events. I instantly shared what I was learning as I learned it via Twitter, sending updates to more than 700 of my friends, colleagues, and other interested people - many of whom I don’t even know, but they’ve chosen to get updates from me.

From a citizen media perspective, that’s pretty powerful. Not only can anyone’s news matter - it can matter fast!

As a “microblog,” Twitter is built for speed. Posts are capped at 140 characters and can be updated via the Web or cell phone text messages, meaning even if you happen upon breaking news and don’t have your laptop handy, you can still break the story.

Over the last several months Twitter has finally hit its stride as a leading tool for finding and sharing timely information from all sorts of places and sources. Its usefulness for breaking news is obvious. However, Twitter is equally useful for tracking ongoing stories and issues, getting fast answers or feedback, finding sources, building community, collaborating on coverage, and discovering emerging issues or trends.

All this from a free service that only lets you post text messages up to 140 characters long. Well, it’s amazing what you can say and do in just 140 characters.

In this learning module I’ll explain why citizen journalists should use Twitter and how to get started with Twitter. I’ll also show how using Twitter on a daily basis can improve your citizen journalism. I’ll recommend some handy Twitter tools, and I’ll warn you about some Twitter pitfalls and shortcomings.

Tools and Tactics to Tweet Well on Twitter

By Kelly D. Talcott
New York Law Journal
February 19, 2009

In an earlier "Technology Today" column I wrote about the benefits of using newsreaders to stay abreast of multiple blogs. I pointed out that newsreaders -- my current favorite of which is Google Reader -- allow you to build "channels" of information so that you can control what kinds of information you receive and when you read it.

A newer information-exchange tool that has received a lot of press recently is Twitter. This free Internet-based service will broadcast whatever you have to say to whoever decides to receive your messages, and will allow you to receive and view similar messages from other Twitter users. The catch: each message can be no more than 140 characters long, the standard length of a cell phone text message.

Twitter mystified me when I first encountered it a couple of years ago. It bills itself as "a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"

After a short period of self-examination I concluded that little of what I was doing would be of interest to anybody else. I also decided that I was not curious enough about other people to want to know when they were stuck in traffic or meeting a high school crush for drinks.

I put Twitter aside until I started reading more about it from a number of blogs, via my newsreader, of course. It seemed that Twitter had grown up, maturing into a content delivery system for business, or at least for business people. Twitter had developed into a good way to find out what interesting people thought was interesting at any given time. It was also a way of connecting directly with those interested in what you had to say; the Obama campaign made very effective use of the @barackobama Twitter account, which has more than 250,000 followers (though the last post was on Jan. 19; the "unofficial" White House blog Twitter feed is @TheWhiteHouse).

So I re-engaged with Twitter and am happy to report that it is worth the time if you employ a few key tools and tactics.

GETTING STARTED

In picking a user name, remember that name will identify you to other Twitter users. If you intend to use the site to help your law practice, it is best to use a version of your real name rather than something fanciful like "partyboy88."

In the nomenclature of Twitter, posts are known as "tweets," an unfortunate bit of cuteness that has probably hindered Twitter's development as a serious communications tool. Signing up for an account and posting a few tweets is less than half of the process of using Twitter, however. To gain any benefit you need to select other users to follow.

There are three main ways to find people. One is by using a Twitter directory; another is by conducting a search; and the third is by following the authors of interesting tweets that are forwarded to you.

There are several well-known Twitter directories. JustTweetIt and Twello each include Twitter listings categorized by specialty, law being one of many. If your focus is on finding other lawyers using Twitter, LexTweet includes what may be the largest and most complete directory of attorneys with Twitter accounts.

Tweets are public, so when you find someone who you might want to follow, you can view their profile and their past tweets to see whether what they have been posting is of interest. You are likely to notice that many tweets include odd-looking links. These links result from the use of hyperlink compression tools that will "shrink" a long link into a short link, which is necessary given Twitter's 140-character limit. The links are typically the gateway to the blog posts or articles that provide much of Twitter's value as an information-delivery tool.

Click on the "Follow" button provided on the person's profile page, and from that point on you will begin receiving their tweets in your home page. As you engage, people will start to follow you. You will be notified of each new follower, and can choose to follow them as well.

NOMENCLATURE

As you begin to follow others' tweets, you will notice that certain conventions are used to help people sort through the information stream. The "@" symbol is used to identify user names. My Twitter user name is thus expressed as @kdtalcott. "RT" is used at the beginning of a tweet to indicate that the user is resending a tweet that was received from another user. Re-tweeting is Twitter's way of spreading information virally, and it is a good way to find new people to follow.

Hashtags ("#") are used in front of words to create easy-to-follow topics; for example, users posting about the recent LegalTech conference in New York could add the #LTNY hashtag to their posts. Users looking for posts about LegalTech then needed to search only for #LTNY.

With these conventions in hand, you are ready to use Twitter as an information-gathering tool, as well as a way to build online relationships with interesting people that you can then take to the real world.

FISHING FOR INFORMATION

The best analogy I've heard to describe Twitter is that it is like a stream of information that constantly flows across your computer screen. It thus makes little sense to constantly monitor your personal Twitter feed. For Twitter to be useful, you need to use some tools that will help you fish through that stream for the tweets that are most interesting to you.

One tool is the search screen available through the Twitter homepage itself. This page lists 10 "Trending topics" that are currently "hot." Viewing this is a good way to see what Twitter users as a whole are discussing at any given point in time; if one of the topics interests you, click on it to access that portion of the Twitter stream.

One of the most valuable tools is a downloadable application called Tweetdeck. If Twitter is like a flowing stream of information, then Tweetdeck is your fishing net. It combines in one interface your regular Twitter stream; a box where you can send your own tweets; a link-compressor that will convert long links into short ones and insert them into your draft tweet; a search feature that allows you to display the ongoing results of multiple searches in individual panels; a "Twitscoop" feature that is an enhanced version of Twitter's native "Trending topics;" and several other tools as well.

One Tweetdeck search you can run is for instances where your own Twitter name is used. For example, one Tweetdeck panel will give me the results of my search for "@kdtalcott." This helps me catch replies and re-tweets that I might otherwise miss.

What Tweetdeck allows you to do is to filter Twitter in a way that is broad, going beyond those people you are following, as well as deep, in that you can drill down on a single topic. This can be a helpful way to stay on top of current discussions on any topic.

INVOLVED IN THE CONVERSATION

What really makes Twitter different from blogs and e-mail is its real-time interactivity. Because you can reply to another user's tweet, and know that the user will see your reply, you can ask questions, have discussions, solicit input and share views. In short, Twitter is at its most useful when it becomes a two-way, or really, a multi-way, street.

A recent panel at LegalTech New York discussed Twitter and its utility for attorneys. There were a number of excellent points made. In particular, the panelists pointed out the following:

1. Use Twitter's search features, particularly those available on Tweetdeck, to receive up-to-date news and information on topics that matter to you from people all over the world.

2. Contribute some of your personality to your tweets. Don't be a corporate drone all the time; occasionally reveal your interests and show that you are a real person. A good example of this was provided by panelist Kevin O'Keefe, who mentioned instances where a casual weekend tweet about a sports event he was watching on TV prompted a Twitter-based discussion that ended in a client relationship.

3. Twitter relationships are a start. It's up to you to take them to the next level. The panel's point here was that human interaction, whether by phone or in person, remains an essential relationship-building tool. While Twitter can help bring people together, it doesn't do the entire job. If you want Twitter to help you build relationships, you still need to be willing to make those relationships personal.

Twitter is not without its pitfalls, of course. Because your tweets are public, you need to use some thought and common sense about what you post In addition to things like client confidences, which really go without saying, there are more practical concerns. A recent story, circulated via Twitter of course, told of a consultant who was visiting an out-of-town client when he tweeted some disparaging comments about the client's home city (specifically, "I would die if I had to live here!"). One of the client's employees was following the consultant on Twitter and distributed the comment widely inside the client company. The result: not good.

Intelligent use of Twitter can help you stay on top of current news, get and keep in touch with clients, and develop contacts around the world. It takes some effort to get up and running, but if approached properly, Twitter can be worth it.

Kelly D. Talcott is a partner at Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, where he practices intellectual property and technology law. Follow him on Twitter: @kdtalcott.