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Teaching Online Journalism

Getting started with Twitter

Amy Gahran explains Twitter for journalists in a new post. It includes a straight-up tutorial on how to get started.

One thing I would emphasize: Twitter is all about whom you are following ( “follow” is to Twitter as the verb “friend” is to Facebook). If you are following very few people, or uninteresting people, or people who simply do not tweet very much, then Twitter will seem useless to you.

When you are following a set of relatively chatty people who are tuned in to your interest areas, what happens is this: They tip you off. In their little 140-character tweets, they often point out stuff you will be happy to see or watch or read.

That’s one of the big values in Twitter.

Update: Tom Cheredar ponders how newspapers should use Twitter (Oct. 25).

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2 Comments

  1. Amy Gahran says:
    October 25, 2008 at 11:37 am

    Thanks Mindy. Glad you liked this post. More to come :-)

    - Amy

  2. “Follow” is to Twitter as the Verb “Friend” is to Facebook « Michael Haddon says:
    November 19, 2008 at 6:09 pm

    [...] influential new-media type Mindy McAdams gives some important advice on getting the most from Twitter: “Twitter is all about whom you are following. If you are [...]