Facebook/Twitter

I think that it is a mistake to attempt to compare Facebook and Twitter. On both sites, users become entangled in the development of an online image, however, this image is constructed very differently on the two sites.

The most obvious difference between the two images is that on Twitter, the user identity does not necessarily have to be tied into the real world identity of the user due to the option of anonymity. It is still important to note that this user identity is still an identity that a user must cultivate. Even without the assignment of a real world name, the username becomes a construct in itself. There is a self-consciousness with which even anonymous twitter users tweet. There is still a connection to this anonymous identity that is run by vanity. People do not want to be boring or to be considered a spam-like, feed-cluttering Follow, and hence, people cultivate their user identities to be interesting.

Although, many Facebook users similarly do not want to clutter their Friends Newsfeeds, it is expected of Facebook to be more personal. The identity that is cultivated by the user does not only include informative status updates, but also photos and a profile detailing interests. (Even the absence of filling out the profile section or of photos is a part of a Facebook identity.) The updates are thus a part of a larger image that is furthermore tied to a real world persona. This real world person is more interesting than the information they spit out. This person stands on its own as interesting. On Facebook, users are still motivated by vanity, but they exercise this vanity to create an overall image of themselves that includes much more than the occasional 140 character tweet.

Both Facebook and Twitter allow users to create online images of themselves; however, the Twitter image is a markedly different one than the Facebook one.

Twitter Lists

A new feature on Twitter are the Lists. Anyone can create a list consisting of any public profile (or profile of someone who has granted you access to view their tweets). I used the List feature to create a list of everyone in our class on Twitter. I am not sure that I got everyone, so feel free to Tweet at me (@CC12887), and I will quickly add you to the list!

Now that I have made the list, anyone (even people not on the list) can now "Follow" the list I created. Once you have done this, you can click "@cc12887/Trinity-bloggers" on the right hand side of your screen, and only tweets by people on the list (our class) will show up!

I wish I could Tweet at a list so that every time I want to say something about Twitter, I don't have to create a whole new blog post!

Anywaaay, a few useful tools:

Mashable does a free Twitter Guide Book for those of you who are still lost. It is updated consistently as Twitter continues to try out new features.

Answers.com also has a 5 Twitter Tips You May Not Know. Posted by Susan Elaine Cooper (@buzzedition)

Find Friends on Twitter

If you are looking for people to follow, go to the search box on your Facebook page and type in twitter.com. Then select "People" from the left hand side. A lot of people put their Twitter site on Facebook in the website section. Facebook will show you your friends who have done this. It is only a matter of time before Facebook adds Twitter Username as an option.

I Follow:

For those of you new to Twitter, here are some people I enjoy Following.

For some laughs, my absolute favorite follow is @badbanana.
           Also, @weirdnews, @kennethn,
For social media updates, @mashable is the obvious user to follow.
Random (incredibly interesting) information: @guykawasaki
Celebs that are worth the follow:
      Stephen Colbert @stephenathome
*REMEMBER if you are going to follow a celebrity, make sure that it is a "verified account." Twitter did not have this feature when I first started out, and it's really useful.
*ALSO, keep in mind that a lot of celebrities have staff updating the their profiles, so obviously, following PR conscious stars like Britney Spears is kind of a bore.

Hockey Fans: @ecklund
Sports Fans: @deucedbrains -- He's just starting out but I love his commentary.
News is the obvious: @BBCworld, @thecnnwire, @nytimes ......

    I also enjoy following specific reporters from these news organizations. That way, you can get information more tailored to your interests (your favorite movie critique, restaurant critique, fashionista, Republican commentator...)

I enjoy Twitter

There are a bunch of different reasons I enjoy Twitter. I really don't have time to fill out a blog daily, and since so much of my time is spent writing essays, doing readings, etc, I really don't have that much to say on a blog every day. If a blog isn't updated regularly, it loses followers, so I am not a blogger. (Ironically, I am blogging this.) I have time to update my Twitter fairly regularly - random thoughts I have, something I see on TV, read about, something someone else Tweets, I then retweet.

I admit that at first, I did not get the point, but I did enjoy trying to amass followers. For me, more followers implied that I had been 'successful' as a user. Since then, I have learned to love Twitter for thousands of other reasons, and I don't think much about getting followers. I imagine it is similar to having a blog in that you don't actually know that people are reading your posts or necessarily know the people that read them, but you write the posts as if there is an audience, without much thought to that audience. I tweet things I find interesting or my random thoughts on movies I have seen, and it is as if there is an audience that I am writing to. This audience would be interested in the articles I find, but I know that most of the people reading my tweets are people that I know, so they probably care more about the fact that my friend Adrienne is coming to visit me this weekend. But I still refuse to use Twitter to update the world of the mundane happenings in my life. So there is a disconnect between those two lines of thought. I still enjoy tweeting however.

An Article on Twitter

I posted this earlier, but check it out. This is a blog post I did about Twitter earlier in the semester, which links to an article that I wrote about Twitter last Spring.

http://persephonesplayland.blogspot.com/2009/09/one-writers-quest-to-unearth.html

A couple of other things...

RT @fadymansour KFC became a trending topic after Magic Johnson said MJ ate a KFC fried chicken bucket when he visited. No ad can top that!

"We've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change." -- Rear Window


Ayatollah Warns Iranians: "I am Following You All on Twitter" http://bit.ly/PGgu5

"Facebook is like Cheers, where everyone knows your name. Twitter is the hipster bar, where you booze and schmooze people" - Annie Colbert 

Tweetdeck

I just want to add something quick about Tweetdeck.

I have experimented with several of the apps, including Tweetdeck, and what I have found that I really liked is Destroy Twitter. The great way for these kind of apps to gain users is that every time someone Tweets from them it says which was used for that Tweet.

This is how I came across Destroy Twitter. An article was tweeted into my feed for uses of the iPhone. A University of Chicago student had figured out a way to use his iPhone to open his dorm room door. I just spent 30 minutes trying to find the article and failed, but his Twitter username is @varenc - This is discrovered after using the Find People feature on Twitter. If a genius like him uses Destroy Twitter, I figured I should too.

Give it a go: it's faster and more streamlined.

Five Uses for Twitter

1. The obvious - publicity.

2. When following a person who retweets another, you may go check out that "other" and become a follower as well.

2. Also through clicking on one of the trending topics on the right, you will find a live feed of people who have talked about that topic - if they say something interesting, you may go check that tweeter out and possibly become a follower as well.

3. Once you are a follower, there is a pretty strong chance you will check out the blog or site that the Twitter account is linked to.

4. When someone mentions your Twitter account, that person's followers might click on your username just because it was mentioned by someone they follow. And the cycle continues.

5. If you have a new article or post that you think deserves attention, you can tweet about it, so your followers never miss a good one.

6. Someone might tweet about your site and publicity! Even if you don't have your own account.


When the plane crashed into the Hudson River, it was a Twitter user who first broke the news of what had happened (namely, what had happened was not a terrorist attack, but an accident). I happened to be with a friend and we were searching the news to find out what had happened, fearing the worst. I decided to open up Twitter, and sure enough, there was a trending topic, and Twitter calmed my fears before even the news could figure out what had happened. The news channels probably knew what had occurred but could not report it until they had confirmation from a number of sources.

Hyperlocal Blogging in Lake Forest

I was telling my friend who is a blogger about the class discussion of hyperlocal blogging, and she directed me to this site which covers news and events in Lake Forest and Lake Bluff. The first thing I noticed was that the blog has the weather (which was one of the first tips on the site Courtney posted about hyperlocal blogging). This site has everything -- from an armed robbery at a nearby gas station to coverage of the local sailing team to finding a home for a dog. Very cool. The suburban mundane is suddenly celebrity.

Blogging the Hyperlocal

After reading Courtney's find 'PeytonPlace.com' I decided to check out Lake Forest blogs. I went to the blog link off of the Lake Forester's web site.  I expected to find people I knew or events I had heard of. Instead, I found blogs that covered the entire area covered by Pioneer Press, which is the company that owns the Lake Forester. Most of the information on these blogs did not pertain to my area or peek my interest.

The best site I found for local blogging was a site dedicated to my county, not my city: LakeCounty.org/blogs. The site is not well planned or updated very regularly, so it is not very helpful for someone trying to stay up to date on Lake County news; what it does do, however, is provide information to prospective visitors.

The Hyperlocal: The Lake Forester

My town's local newspaper, the Lake Forester, is still widely read by Lake Forest residents. The most interesting news that it covered however was always who was on the honor roll and who was in the blotter. To be in the blotter was the cardinal sin of Lake Forest. Once someone turned 18, his or her name could be printed along with the offense and due to the overzealous nature of Lake Forest's finest, anyone was at risk. Even the curfew breakers were subject to humiliation.

My first memory of our town's newspaper was when a photographer came to interview my grade about Pioneer Days (a fairly self-explanatory week during which third graders had to live life as if they were pioneers). Looking back on it, it was very exciting for us to be in the newspaper, but who really read this article other than our parents? And couldn't our parents have been easily informed about the event by the school through a newsletter as my high school did? The answer is that the Lake Forester's article on Pioneer Days gave our school positive publicity. A family moving to the area could look to local newspapers in deciding where to settle on the North Shore. This means that the hyperlocal's newspaper's primary responsibility is the town's reputation, not reporting the truth.

Furthermore, now that the Lake Forester has an online platform, anyone looking for information about the town is likely to look at the site instead of buying the newspaper. This goes for the Classified section as well.

BREAKING NEWS: The Primaries in Lake Forest

So pretend you're a hyperlocal reporter, and record Election Day in your town on your blog, at least as you experience it.

 It was the first time I would ever vote. Awesome. I walked into City Hall -- who knew Lake Forest had a City Hall? It was like walking into early 1900s Ginevra King's Lake Forest with wooden inscriptions on the walls supporting the winding staircase. The only indication that it was the 21st century was the sheet of paper at the top with an arrow, directing voters to the voting room.

The room that I had imagined so many times during Bush's election (when I had been too young to vote) was just like any other room. No sneering politicians, no lobbyists, no protests -- Just some elderly volunteers handing out clipboards. 

Morbid Entry On Real World Fatality in the Virtual World

 Thoughts on Virtual Estates Lead to Real-World Headaches
I hate the idea of my family and/or friends having access to my email or Facebook after my death. People always joke about someone being responsible for hiding the porn from someone's wife, mother in the event of his/her death. The virtual world holds even more secrets. People can have entire lives on Second Life and no one would know. For all we know, Enchant could have an entire real world family as well. I like the idea of a digital executor, who will receive a person’s latest passwords in the event of his or her death. This recalls the idea of the friend who knows where the porn stash is or how to continue to get money to the illegitimate child.