William F. Garrity

EDUCAUSE's Learning Initiative publishes the latest in its "7 Things You Should Know About..." series

7 Things You Should Know About... Twitter

Twitter is an online application that is part blog, part social networking site, part cell phone/IM tool, designed to let users answer the question “What are you doing?” Users have 140 characters for each posting (or “tweet”) to say whatever they care to say. Many tweets do answer the question of what the user is doing, but plenty of others are responses to other tweets, pointers to online resources that the user found interesting, musings, or questions. Similar to social networking sites like Facebook—which has itself evolved to include mini-updates—Twitter lets users create formal friendships, which collectively establish numerous and interconnected networks of users. In addition, Twitter works with cell phones and other SMS clients, making it an easy way for mobile users to stay in touch virtually anywhere.

EDUCAUSE is the association for higher education computing. 

The "7 Things You Should Know About..." series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning technologies. Each brief focuses on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use these briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.