TECH GURLZ RULE

Are you on Twitter yet?

Oh, my!!

This is a not so short explanation of what Twitter is for me.

I LOVE TWITTER.

It may not be for you, but after you have read this short article/blog/diatribe/lesson/soliloquy or whatever it is,  you will know more.  If you are already on Facebook then working with Twitter will be  easy.

(Personally, I do not use the Facebook app for the Tweets to go on FB as updates. I tweet too much!!)

It is amazing how many new people are getting on Twitter everyday. Will you tweet today?

Maybe you are already on Twitter and just don’t get it.

I signed up in the beginning and never did a thing with it because I thought you had to use your phone and I thought this notion of updates was just BORING! Someone smart said to me (about FB), it isn’t what you are doing as much as what you are thinking…I like that…I think…therefore I am…keep that in mind when you Tweet.

I want to personally thank Dave Darrow on Facebook, also an old classmate of mine from Westchester, California,  who webcams his  “Dave the Painting Guy” every week and a great artist, for urging me to try Twitter again with TweetDeck and said: You don’t need to use a phone!

THANK YOU, I DO NOT LIKE PHONES!

I do have to mention that I resisted Facebook for SO long! Yep. It was my dear, dear friend, Deborah Kanda from Culver City, who said to me one day on the phone, “What is this face thing? Everyone is talking about it.” So…how could I resist?

I have only been on Facebook for a couple of months, but it has been fabulous. I have connected with so many old friends, new friends, friends I didn’t even know I had , friends I wish I had known I had and everything in between in terms of networks.

It has been social media paradise for me, but I was really getting BORED.

Yep.

So…along comes Twitter…

And the world collapse.

Obama on Leno tonight said that AIG would have made the world collapse if the government hadn’t helped them, but HEY the WORLD IS COLLAPSING anyway. (It’s okay Pres, it is not your fault.)

So today, Obama was on Leno and it was the 6th anniversary of the Iraqi War.

Also, the genocide in Sudan has been going on for that long and the civil war in Congo for at least that long.

Let’s get a grip, people, and stop all this nonsense about the American people being bullies and blind.

Blind bullies!?!  Are we that ignorant?

I hope not.

WAKE UP AND TWEET!

Flutter your little hearts about until you’re so tired it doesn’t matter anymore!

People need to have a voice.

Isn’t that what I have been saying for years and years? YES!

Barack Obama is a like an angel from heaven for the world.

His visions light the way for the lost masses.

If we stick together here – all you tech gurlz and all you not so tech boyz,

we can make a difference that is positive,

please, please, try to open your hearts

to only love.

Let’s heal the world, one tweet at a time.

There is NO TIME FOR FUSSING AND FIGHTING MY FRIENDS to quote some charming Brits.

Here are a few quick lessons

on Twittering or Fluttering on Twitter or Tweeting in Twitterville or Twitland with Tweeples or Tweeps or whatever…!

It is all part of a new explosion of creativity, awareness, connectivity and energy!

The best part of tweeting is the hashtags.

Once I figured them out, I was like a new person on Twitter.

So let me describe what that means, just in case you’re thinking about tweeting, thus far…

hashtags (#) http://hashtags.org come from journalism where, for example, in a fire emergency the news feed stays organized to help people who need it most – OR something like that!! So let’s say you’re a teacher interested in elearning – like me – it would look like this: #elearning.

Then you can visit http://search.twitter.com or http://www.monitter.com and see who is tweeting right now about that very subject. Then you can look at his or her profile, follow that individual or possibly RT (retweet) or @reply that person for a public question. The best part is that you can write a 140 character tweet (120 is best) and put that hashtag in your message and see yourself in the mix!

It is very exciting to read what others are saying about your particular area of interest.

It is even more exciting when someone else @replies to you and then you’re tweeting about a common interest in real time!

No phone calls, no voice mails, no freakin’ emails, no reading a blog and submiting a comment…

blah, blah, blah, nope that is all GONE GONE GONE!

However…

Tweeting is not for everyone.

Tweeting works best for people who:

1) love their computers more than their families – kidding!! (My cats are cool! ;^0)

OR

2) love to communicate even if it is about nonsense, jokes, music, photos you just took, what you are eating, or WHATEVER  random thought you may have or not

OR

3) love to connect with people who have similar interests AND want to see it turn into action for change because our PRESIDENT is on Twitter and listening (I think) to our concerns, so get your concerns articulated and let’s make some changes in this world while the opportunities remain available hashtag #p2 for diversity and community issues for change.org and the white house! no joke! ;^))

OR

4) love the thrill of the news or cutting edge development and want to BE THERE!  Usually tweeters know the news before anyone else! Also, each day probably two or three new applications tweep up because everyone is just spurting out everything,

some of it sux, but some of it is cool…okay…

more cool stuff

5) Twitwall http://twittwall.com or my Twitwall http://twitwall.com/view/?who=profchandler is the coolest thing yet. It is where you can blog or post almost anything that you would post on Facebook onto your Twitter page and the title gets tweeted with a link back to your Twitwall. I love it because I type fast and move fast most of the time. I don’t like having to blog because it is too time consuming.

LIKE THIS ONE!

Seriously, darlings, I would rather Tweet, but I get so many great e-newsletters and there are so many pertinent issues right now I want to share quickly with other tweeples.  Twitwall is just freakin’ perfect for that purpose.

Kudos go to Twitwall’s creator:  Michael E. Carluen http://twitter.com/mecarluen

He is also a very nice guy and I know he is a REAL person.

It is sort of like you get to know very famous people on Twitter.

There are famous people on Twitter, too.

(Besides our President)

6) To find famous people to follow go to http://wefollow.com and see  Entertainers listed as the top group. You can search for any of the categories on wefollow although you are pretty much stuck with a megaload of geeky stuff right now…CHANGE THAT PLEASE.

So, are you ready?

Okay, if you’re ready to Tweet on Twitter, flutter

your wings

&

fly

GURLZ and BOYZ

here are the easy steps.

1. Go to http://twitter.com and get yourself a free username and password. Try to pick something that will reflect YOU, because twitter is about you or your organization, but it mostly about YOU.  Now, I can say that some folks have multiple Twitter accounts and there are applications or apps to make it easier, but, alas, that is probably another course AND another day. (Guess this turned into a course, eh?)
2. Download PowerTwitter if you’re using Mozilla Firefox, (if not, forget this step), so your http://twitter.com/username site will have more power (it will have it limits still, though, but I like having it open all day anyway)
3. Download another application (addon) like TwitterFox (again only for Firefox) which I LOVE because it is small, quiet and fits snuggly into the right hand corner of Firefox and it is easy to learn. Or download Tweetdeck. Or any number of others. If you’re using your phone go to HELP on twitter.com and see the phone information. There are separate applications for phones and there are TONS of those as well. Yet, you can start tweeting as soon as you have PowerTwitter or even before with just Twitter.com.  But, wait!
4. Time to make your PROFILE look good. If you want something super custom, just save that for another day. Upload your logo or cool picture and fool around with different backgrounds and colors. Make it look nice, so people do not have to adjust their eyes too much. People will be viewing your profile A LOT! Go into Settings and play around for a little while. I suggest you do NOT send a tweet until your profile looks decent and you have followed some people for at least a little while – like 20 minutes or 2 days depending on your knack for picking things up and your fear level.
5. Don’t be afraid at all ;^), but don’t be a troll either ;^((. Don’t say something nasty to someone just to get attention. That is moronic. Also, try not to get into debates and use profanity.
6. Keep it clean, if possible, if not, maybe you should go find your mom to help you.
7. NOW, you are ready for that first tweet – you have people you are following and maybe about 3 out of 8 will follow you back in the beginning, maybe more later, but you want people to follow you and you want to follow people. What I did was find a few cool people (there are many of them!) and follow the majority of people they chose to follow. Well, within reason.
8. Then read the feeds and see how the messages can only be short and wait until you have something marginally cool to say even if it is: Hello Tweeples This is my first Tweet. Or: Thx 4 following me, did u hear about 1 joker who won the NASCAR 2day? More info here: then there will be a link. Don’t worry you don’t have to count spaces, Twitter does that for you, plus it will not send a Tweet with too many characters. You want to save about 10 spaces, too, for RTs or #hashtags or both.
9. The links are a little tricky in the beginning to learn, but you can do it. I think people like TweetDeck in part because of the easy “tinyURL” or shorten URL dialog box. Twitterfox does it automatically and PowerTwitter does it too, but not easily. If you are posting from your Twitwall, you don’t even need to worry about it because you are posting the link on that wall. Hence, the beauty of Twitwall, at least, in part.
10. Another word of caution here about tweetiquette: try not to sell yourself too hard. When someone follows you, it is appropriate to DM that person and say thank you for the follow, but please do not put several sites with your store/services links or ask if you can help in any way. Keep it about networking until you know people well enough to have a tweeple conversation.
11. The very best part is that if you make a mistake it will tweet away in no time and no one will yell at you either. Most tweeple are incredibly professional and appropriate, but each twitter user is different. Some only want to follow a small number, while others are just news feeds with thousands of updates and they don’t follow anyone. Others, like me, tend to follow more people than follow me. I also try to keep my updates about the same as those I am following. It just works better for me. I do not ask people to follow me either. I also do not tweet “please RT” but I think it is okay to do it sometimes. The big heavy users who have 50K followers probably only read @replies or whatever.
12. Remember DMs are direct messages that can only be passed between users who follow one another, so that is your goal. Get people to follow you by being interesting and then you follow them back so you can private message one another. It comes in handy when you don’t want it to be public. Then you can start with your services or websites or whatever…
13. Remember, too, all tweets and all @replies are public. They can be seen on the API newsfeeds anywhere.
14. You approve each and every user you follow, but those that follow you do not have to explain how or why they follow you. You do not have to follow everyone that follows you. I do not!!  Anyone that looks like a robot needs to be immediately blocked. You’ll know. They usually want to sell you something, some weird name, very few followers, and maybe one or two updates and just seem robotic. Block. Block. Block.
15. There is another service that I have used called Mr. Tweet. That app will recommend people to you based on who you are following and your interests. Do NOT buy any services that say you can get 10,000 followers in 30 days. Those are scams. It isn’t about how many followers you have either, it is about meeting your personal goals and expanding your network for Twitter happiness.
16. Be real. Be cool. Be tweeting from your heart.

That is it!

I think.

No, one more thing.

Do not get discouraged if no one talks to you or Retweets (RTs) your messages for a while. It takes time. Be patient, be kind and find something to SAY besides some random thing about your lunch or stomach or both. ;^))

You can tweet me @profchandler or find me at http://twitter.com/profchandler to follow me.

I will follow you back. If I don’t @reply me and remind me.

I am also on Facebook and have other blogs, most of that stuff is on my Twitwall with the icons.

No time now to go into all of that stuff.

Hope you got it and that you’ll jump right in and fly.

If not, come back the next day and try.

Peace out,  my sistahs and bros, don’t go making any foes!

You’re the tech gurlz & boyz, start playing with yer toyz.

Bye for now, Tweeples, see you in Twitterville tomorrow, if I am not sleeping. ;^))

LOVE YOU ALL! xoxo