Short and tweet

 

 

M aybe you’ve seen them, tapping on their Blackberrys or scrolling through a stream of information on their iPhones.

They look like they’re texting or surfing the Web, but they’re not: They’re Twittering. If you’re among them, you’re nodding right now, maybe even typing “Reading article about Twitter” into your phone. If you’re not, you might be wondering whether Twitter isn’t just another high-tech way to waste time.

Twittering is text messaging, instant messaging, and blogging all rolled into one. Posts, or “tweets” as they’re known in the Twitterverse, are limited to 140 characters and are usually meant to answer one simple question: What are you doing?

Twitter , which has been around since 2006, gained traction as a fast, efficient communications tool when users aggregated news of the massive earthquake that struck China last May, and when eyewitnesses Twittered about the November terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. But most tweets aren’t real-time accounts of natural disasters or world events. They’re mundane snippets of everyday life, such as “Stuck in traffic” or “Cheerios for breakfast again.”

Those humdrum responses to “What are you doing?” inevitably lead to another question: Who cares?

Certainly not everyone. But your posts about what you’re reading on your lunch hour or where you’re headed after work might resonate with someone, and that can be a jumping-off point for more meaningful dialogue.

It takes only about 15 seconds to get set up on Twitter, but creating an account isn’t enough to get the conversation flowing. It takes time to build a network and find the right balance of friends (the people whose tweets you receive) and followers (the people who sign up to receive your tweets).

Chris Lindell, webmaster and president-elect of the Rotary Club of Cedar Rapids West, Iowa, USA, was looking for ways to bring together a more diverse group of members and potential members. “Something that we hear from folks is that they have a hard time connecting,” says Lindell. “So how do we provide avenues for people to be able to interact with others in these new ways? Twitter keeps coming up.”

Since November, Lindell has been Twittering about the club’s work to help victims of the floods that devastated the Cedar Rapids area in June, and sharing links to videos and information posted on the club’s Web site. Momentum has been slow to build, but Lindell says he has made a few useful Rotary connections through Twitter and plans to keep experimenting. Still, he doesn’t have a personal account, and says he’s not sure he will open one. “I haven’t seen the payback,” he says. “How does it engage people?”

According to RI Web operations specialist Beth Skony, who oversees Rotary International’s official Twitter presence , Lindell is probably not alone: Twitter doesn’t immediately “click” for many users, but she says Rotary’s Twitter site can be a good place to start.

“When [Rotarians] come to our site and they see that we have 300-some followers, they know that most of the other followers are Rotarians, and they can reach out to them pretty easily,” says Skony. “We’re the center point, and they can make those other connections.” Think of a cocktail party filled with interesting people. Tweets are the open-ended icebreakers you need to start conversations and discover what you have in common with others in the room.

“What’s kind of neat about Twitter is that there’s some transcending of interests,” says Greg Hill, who handles communications for the 200-member Rotary Club of Topeka, Kansas. Hill had been using Twitter for more than a year when he brought his club on board in September, and he now maintains three accounts: one for his club, one for business, and one for personal use. Through them, he networks with people all over the country who share his interests.

“While the information is out there for our club, what we’ve found [is] that communication back and forth has been with more of a national audience,” says Hill. “It’s opened up communication to other clubs around the country.”

With three accounts, you might wonder how Hill has time to do anything else. But he says Twitter sucks up less time than other social media, such as Facebook. Part of the appeal, he says, is that he can send out a tweet while he’s sitting in a club meeting or whenever he has a moment of downtime. He also appreciates being able to control the amount of information he receives.

“You can, for the most part, follow people, and they don’t necessarily have to follow you back,” he says. “What that gives you is a great sense of following large organizations and maybe more-established people in your area of interest.” Even if those people never read your tweets, he says, what they have to say can be a great information resource.

And once you know what everyone else is up to, that leaves only one question: What are you doing?