23. Arresting Tweets On April 10th, 2008, James Karl Buck and his translator were arrested by the Egyptian police while covering an anti-government protest. James, a grad student from Berkeley, was able to tweet one word while being taken away by Egyptian authorities: Arrested. This one update sparked his friends and followers into action, eventually leading to his university hiring a lawyer on his behalf and his release a day later.
Now I know out of this group, there are probably several categories of potential tweeters. The first,( twitter drop out) has set up a twitter account, maybe tweeted once or twice, wondered what the big deal was and moved on…The second does not have a twitter account(twirgins) and is here to see what the buzz about it is. One group may be lurkers. The last group, probably has a twitter account and will most likely be tweeting from their phones while this presentation is going on!! Sooo I am going to start at the beginning and hopefully answer questions you might have and hopefully get you excited about this communication tool. Basically Twitter is a social network where you post short bursts of thoughts and information.
So What is twitter? Twitter is a combination of a text message, mini blog, and instant message. It is a short (only 140 character) message that is sent to “followers” people who “subscribed to what you have to say” or received if you choose to follow that person. Twitter became a household word and literally exploded 43% with the addition of a single user.