1,000 followers on Twitter
Today is the day I reached the 1,000 milestone — I’m not sure how important this is, really, but it did give me a small thrill. (Very small.)
If you want to jump on the bandwagon, I am macloo on Twitter. A fine young journalist named Chris Deary was No. 1,000.
If you’re still skeptical about Twitter, here are some helpful articles:
- How We Use Twitter for Journalism, by Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb (April 25, 2008)
- How to Use Twitter – Tips for Bloggers, by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger (Jan. 25, 2008)
- Twitter Basics for Journalists & Recovering Journos, by Amy Gahran of Contentious (Oct. 21, 2008)
Someone recently wrote an excellent list of tips for complete beginners — not the PC Magazine one, and not the one at 10,000 Words, but another one — that was really good, but it seems I failed to add it to Delicious. If someone knows the link, please send it! (It was aimed at absolutely clueless newbies, and it was very nice, clear, brief, and helpful. I recall that it explained the importance of writing a bio, using your real name, and adding a photo/avatar. I think it also explained @ and d, as well as retweeting.)
Find people on Twitter with a Twellow search. (Another site, Mr. Tweet, can recommend people you might like to follow, but I think it works better if you have already been using Twitter for a while and have a backlog of tweets built up.)
Find topics on Twitter from the local search page.
Search with a hash mark (e.g., #journalism) to limit your search to topics.
Well you just blew my buzz from celebrating 100 followers. Showoff. Lol. Congrats on being popular.
@lukemorris
March 15, 2009 at 11:52 amCongrats on the milestone and thanks for the link!
March 15, 2009 at 12:25 pmCongrats, Mindy. Is it possible this is the link you are looking for? I find it very helpful.
http://www.jenleereeves.com/twitter-tips/
March 15, 2009 at 12:52 pmThanks, Mary — I had not seen that one, and it’s quite good! But that’s not the one I remember. Dang, if only I had bookmarked it …
March 15, 2009 at 1:53 pmHi Mindy,
Congrats on the milestone. I find it interesting that you only follow a very small portion of the 1000. Doesn’t that make the conversation — essentially what Twitter is all about — rather one-sided?
Interested to hear your thoughts on this one.
Cheers,
March 15, 2009 at 5:08 pmKoren
@Koren – You’re right, my ratio of followers to followed is about 10-to-1. A lot of the people who follow me are tweeting things I don’t need to follow, and many of them actually tweet in other languages. I can manage Spanish, but I can’t really deal with tweets in most other languages. Sometimes I follow people for about a week or two and then un-follow them. I’m fussy about signal-to-noise.
March 15, 2009 at 5:23 pmMindy,
Congrats on your Twitter popularity. I don’t know if this is the guide you remember, but Etan Horowitz, the Orlando Sentinel tech writer, has a good beginner’s guide to Twitter. You can follow him on Twitter too, @etanowitz. His tutorial is at http://tinyurl.com/amekcm.
You can also find other Sentinel twitter accounts at orlandosentinel.com/twitter. (Some are better than others). And if my goal is to catch you, I need more followers too. Follow me @osphoto.
And for the hesitant journalist, let me say one thing; I have found sources and story ideas from twitter feeds. Really.
Tom Burton
March 16, 2009 at 9:21 amPhotos Editor and Multimedia Producer
Orlando Sentinel
Hi, Tom. I already follow you (smile!). Etan’s guide is very good, but that’s also not the one I recall. It had nice illustrations for each item on the list and a lot of white space — it was quite easy to read.
Not gonna follow Etan until SXSW is over!
March 16, 2009 at 9:45 amCongrats on the 1,000 followers! It’s a fun milestone for sure – I recently reached it myself. Maybe will see you on Twitter sometime – http://twitter.com/ckanal.
March 17, 2009 at 1:53 amAccording to what I heard at SXSW, this must mean that you “give good URL.”
March 19, 2009 at 8:38 am[...] March I had 1,000 followers on Twitter. Sometime earlier today, I reached [...]
January 31, 2010 at 7:49 pm