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Like birds, some engineers really do tweet. Twitter.com, the popular microblogging and social networking website, enables users from around the globe to send and receive short messages called "tweets". Twitter may be banned from the White House and in financial centers such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), but the site remains one of the world's 50 most popular according to a web analysis from Alexa Internet, Inc.
Washington politicos and Persian Gulf petro-sheiks may have to remain quiet (well, on Twitter at least), but engineers in other places can tweet on – as long as they keep their missives to 140 characters or less. That's as much as you can say at one time on Twitter. Another thing you need to know is that those who subscribe to your tweets are called "followers". The folks to whom you subscribe are the people or organizations that you're "following".
Why Bother?
Steven Johnson, a columnist who contributes to Slate and Wired magazines, describes the nuts and bolts of Twitter as "remarkably simple". Pear Analytics, a market research firm, counters that simplicity of design is no substitute for quality content. After completing a two-week study of 2000 tweets, Pear concluded that "pointless babble" comprises the largest category of Twitter content.
Danah Boyd, a social-networking researcher who runs the gauntlet from NPR to The O'Reilly Factor, counters that all this chatter is akin to the "social grooming" of animal science. If that's not scientific-sounding enough, feel free to substitute Ms. Boyd's other catchphrase - "peripheral awareness". For their part, business leaders tell bloggers such as Marcia Conner that Twitter just doesn't provide "enough space to capture deep thoughts and bright vision".
Oh, brother.
The Buzz on Tweeting
Can we avoid blamestorming, leveraging our synergistic energies, and pushing the envelope? Maybe we should just come right out and play a game of Business Buzzword Bingo? Fortunately, there is another alternative – and it involves you.
CR4 is a form of social media, of course, and we're savvy enough (or so we like to think) to sail our proverbial ship into broader social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Engineers, industrial suppliers, and educational institutions have joined us in a common cause – to use this new medium usefully. So come check out CR4_News on Twitter sometime. And let us know if you're an engineer who tweets.
Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_banned_from_white_house.php
http://mashable.com/2007/12/05/twitter-is-banned-in-the-united-arab-emirates/
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/marcia-conner/learn-all-levels/can-twittering-create-economy-words
http://management.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=management&cdn=money&tm=7&f=20&su=p560.7.336.ip_&tt=2&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.businessbuzzwordbingo.com/bbbingo.html
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Re: Engineers Who Tweet
