Alex Yule (@yuletide)

Mapping Center Lightning Talk

3/31/11

What is Twitter?

“Twitter is an information network. Millions of people, organizations, and businesses use it to discover and share new information.” – twitter.com

“SMS of the internet”

Microblogging

• Real-time

• Bite-sized 140 Characters

• Social “Followers” @reply

RT /via, ^hat-tip

• Started in 2006 at Odeo

• SXSW 2007

20k 60k tweets per day

• Growth

2007: 400k tweets per quarter

2008: 100m tweets per quarter

6/2010: 65m tweets per day, 750/s

• 2010 NBA finals: 3,085 tweets per second

• 2011

Alex gets retweeted by @Alyssa_Milano, life is complete

History

Why?!

• Instead of RSS @smashingmag

• Events #aea

• http://tagal.us/tag/aea

#uc2010

• Current Events @BreakingNews

@AJEnglish

• Environment @drgrist

@kate_sheppard

• Curated interestingness @brainpicker

@boingboing

• Industry News/Analysis @zeldman

@jowyang

• Crowd-sourcing: @briancray: What service do you use to read an article later?

For those wondering: Instapaper, Evernote, and readitlaterlist.com

Features

• Lists

http://twitter.com/Esri/staff

• Hashtags

http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23arcgis

• Mobile (SMS)

Text to 40404

• Stats

• Twitter clients

Twitter for iOS

Tweetdeck

TweetDeck

Politics – Power to the People

• Moldova 2009

• Middle East 2011

Tunisia

• State Department

Egypt

Bahrain

Libya

@acarvin

• http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/nprs_andy_carvin_s

hows_how_to_retweet_globally_map.php

• Only 15% RT’s from the USA