- Image via CrunchBase
That’s right, the little tweeting bird is all over the place on campus. Every department, administrative office, and student now has an @ handle. I walk down Commonwealth Avenue and hear college kids debating whether the posting to twitter is “tweeting” or “twitting” (I’m in the tweeting camp…). It’s just so strange to think that Twitter has become a main-stream(ish) service that the masses, at least at the college age/level, have seemed to adopt and run with.
Last week, my friends @DeanElmore, @JohnBattaglino and Tom O’Keefe (@bostontweet) led the first Boston University “tweet crawl.” Here’s a concept for you. Combine Twitter/social media, with the age-old tradition of imbibing intoxicating beverages and you’ve got yourself a dangerous combination. It seems that the crew didn’t have a schedule or even a route prepared but they tweeted their next stop and a crowd formed to follow through the standard BU haunts – the BU Pub, Cornwall’s, the Dugout.
It’s funny to think that I joined Twitter 643 days ago, according to www.whendidyoujointwitter.com – it was a time when twitter was still VERY new and definitely didn’t have the sort of following it does now. Really, it was just the insiders, the ones that knew about it because they were truly geeky. To say that you tweet, was an automatic admission of your geekiness and further, proof that you probably were of a technically inclined nature.
Twitter activities here at Boston University and in Boston as a whole have increased significantly of late. There was even a discussion of which campus in the Boston area was most with it when it came to twitter… I think BU won: Boston tweet debate. The real question here is whether or not you “get it” and use the service or just use it because everyone else is.
One can see this clearly by the high number of people with protected tweets. Very few hardcore twitter users will protect their tweets but so many students are worried about what employers can and will see, that they are cutting out the greater twitterverse in lieu of keeping their messages for their close friends.
I guess that means that the real question is why do you use twitter? I know why I do (a topic for another night), but why do YOU use twitter? P.S. you can follow me on twitter at @jamesconnors.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Heyo, Mr. James. You typed the whendidyoujointwitter.com site wrong. To be honest, I first got Twitter because Facebook doesn’t support T-Mobile, and it was a roundabout way to update my status.
Thanks for the heads up, Ralph – I updated it above – real URL is whendidYOUjointwitter.com
BU is definitely winning the social media engagement race among Boston universities. Though I’m loyal to Northeastern University, they haven’t jumped on the boat like BU has. BU practically POGO-STICKED (stuck?) on the social media boat. And props to you guys. I’ve been following much of BU’s activity and feel that all schools should be as engaged than BU.
My school is jumping on the bandwagon… and my friends and family too. One thing I hate — when people use it as a facebook status and put “is” right before… STOP IT THIS ISN’T FACEBOOK GO HOME I HATE YOU.
I think the real power of Twitter is that it’s so easily integrated into everything. I have my homepage display my twitter RSS feed, making it easy to update my website without having to be at a computer or log into the admin features of my site.
It amazes me how quickly Twitter went from being unknown to the majority of my friends at the University of Texas and then, one day, BOOM, it was everywhere!
What’s even more amazing is that several research publications are reporting that there is almost a 60% drop-off rate for new Twitter users, because so many people just don’t get it.
I use Twitter as a way to reach out to like minded-people and query them with various questions and invoke conversation around topics of interest.
I just wrote a long post on how I use Twitter and why I think it is valuable. I’d love to hear a more detailed description of how you’re using Twitter.
http://makemoneyincollegeblog.com/2009/06/05/twitter-guide-marketing-pr-and-relationship-building-tips/