Twitter 140: Explaining Twitter to Your Parents (and Kids)

I ran across an excellent overview of Twitter yesterday, via Mashable. Jessica Hische does a great job outlining who sees what when you post to Twitter, reply, retweet or use #hashtags, and also highlights some important differences between Facebook and Twitter.

As Jessica indicates, her guide isn’t just for moms, because the misunderstandings about Twitter span the generations. In fact, younger people (high school and college) are among those most likely to not “get” Twitter. They already have SMS texting, and Facebook chat, so they think their needs for the kind of communication Twitter provides are already met.

Maybe Jessica’s overview will help them see the value.

If I didn’t already have all of the low course numbers taken in the SMUG Twitter Curriculum, I probably would have made this one of the introductory courses, like Twitter 105.

So instead, I’m giving it a course number that is a particular honor in the Twitterverse:

Check out Twitter 140.

Author: Lee Aase

Husband of one, father of six, grandfather of 15. Chancellor Emeritus, SMUG. Emeritus staff of Mayo Clinic. Founder of HELPcare and Administrator for HELPcare Clinic.

One thought on “Twitter 140: Explaining Twitter to Your Parents (and Kids)”

  1. Thanks so much for sharing this. I’ve had a twitter account basically for my blog, mostly for the convenience of followers who like twitter, but I haven’t understood much about it. Every time I look at the page of tweets my eyes start to roll back in my head and I think, “Isn’t there just a phone book or a dictionary I could read?” It still looks about that interesting to me but now I get more about how it works and I see some ways to make it work better for me…

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