TechnoHumanist Corner: Twitter

by Carlos Rodriguez

What do The Vatican, NIH, Fox News, Oprah, John McCain, Ashton Kutcher, and President Obama have in common?  They all use Twitter, the fastest growing method of communications on the Web.  This service has been quietly growing among students and the Facebook audience.  However, Twitter’s popularity quickly grew once it became known that Obama used it, Oprah spoke about receiving tweets (messages or postings), and Twitter appeared on the June 15, 2009, cover of Time magazine.

Twitter was founded by Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Jack Dorsey.  Previously, each had worked at various Internet companies.  Williams had created Blogger, a popular social journal service, which he sold to Google.  After selling Blogger, Williams went to work for Google.   At Google, he met Stone and together they left Google to form Odeo, a podcasting service.  Although Odeo floundered, one of their newly developed products, Twitter, began to generate excitement. Wanting to further develop the new application, Stone and Williams decided to form a company around Twitter.  They were soon joined by Jack Dorsey.  Dorsey liked social journals and wrote software for taxicabs, ambulances, and bike messengers.  He was fascinated by the concept of dispatches and the possibility of applying them in a social setting.  It was Dorsey who fine-tuned Twitter into what it has become today.  The company’s staff began using Twitter to stay in touch and communicate with each other.  Soon they were expanding their use of Twitter to their friends and family.  The concept took root and Twitter went public.

Twitter is a union of various concepts: the Web; the Short Message Service (SMS), which uses short, crisp dispatch-like messages; and multi-format accessibility such as the Web, IM, and portable, hand-held mobile devices.  Simply defined, Twitter is a communications utility based on the concept of Short Message Service (SMS).  However, it has also been defined by how it is used.  Twitter, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder or user.  If you ask a tweeter, someone who uses Twitter, to define it, they will probably explain how they use it.   Twitter can be utilized for microblogging, news, discussions, communicating in times of crisis, chatting, marketing, etc.  You get the picture.  Twitter is sort of a microblogging tool.  While blog posts usually have a theme and are longer than tweets, tweets are similar tosnippets of a conversation or short, quick reactions to posts.

Twitter is an open source application. Open source means that the application code is open to everyone.  This allows tech-savvy users to create new functions for Twitter and accounts for some of its popularity.  To use Twitter, first create an account and personalize your profile.  Twitter is a free service that has no advertising or subscription fees. Once you have created your account and profile, you can start writing in a text box and create your tweets (messages or postings).

Tweets are governed by the SMS (Short Message Service) rules.  Although SMS allows each message to be a maximum of 160 characters (notice I said characters, not words), Tweets confine messages to a maximum of 140 characters.  The remaining twenty characters are reserved for the sender’s name or “handle”.  Tweets are strictly text: no attachments or images.  One of the criticisms of Twitter is that tweets do not have content with depth.  That’s true.  Twitter is not a content management system.  However, tweets do allow the inclusion of URL links to information that does provide more in-depth information.  Brevity forces the writer to be focused, concise, and to the point. Yes, people send frivolous messages, but that is true of any communications medium.  Meaningful content depends on how you craft the message.  Remember that Dorsey’s communications software for ambulances was one of the inspirations for Twitter: If someone suffers a possible heart attack on the street, the ambulance dispatcher is not going to spend ten minutes talking about the situation.  Most likely the message to the EMT will indicate, “Man collapsed at the northeast corner of Broad and Walnut.  He’s conscious, complaining of chest pain.”  That was a 100-character message with a lot of important  information.

Tweets are distributed in real time. They appear in reverse chronological order.  Each message is time-stamped and identifies the twitterer.  The twitterer’s screen name links to a profile page which shows the individual’s previous tweets.  A profile page will also show that person’s friends’ postings, if the friends include the original twitterer’s screen name, preceded by the @ symbol, in their own messages.   In Twitter, you can follow others’ postings or be followed.  Click Follow on an individual’s profile page.  Now every time they post a tweet, you will receive it.  Likewise, you can invite individuals to follow you, or people can elect to follow you without an invitation.   Every time you send a tweet, your followers can receive it.  Unless you elect to make your tweets private (a/k/a Direct or Protected), the postings will also be viewable by the public.  Since SMS does not allow attachments, use Twitpic (http://www.twitpic.com/), to upload your photographs, using your same Twitter username and password.  The Twitter site may have additional free tools for some of the functions SMS does not support.

You can tweet using different media such as the web, your cell phone, or IM.  If you are using your cell phone to Twitter, you should be selective about who you follow.  If you follow a popular person such as Ashton Kutcher, who daily sends and receives a lot of tweets, you may be very unhappy when you receive your cell phone bill.

Here is the other appeal and power of Twitter:  when you are following and being followed, you are a developing a community of people you know and people you don’t know.  This can be a powerful communications tool.  So, when Oprah sent a tweet asking for a remedy for her dogs’ fleas, she got responses not only from her followers, but also from their followers.  She got advice from experts and from lay persons whom she probably never would have contacted or met.  This is the use of collective thinking to resolve or answer a question.  Twitter subscribes to that old adage that two heads are better than one.

How are people using Twitter?  I asked that question on medlib-l, the medical librarians’ email discussion list.  Although I did not receive many responses, I did receive some interesting ones.  One person likes the serendipitous results of Twitter.  He wrote that while many of the postings he saw were not of interest to him, he does get three to five links per day which he might not be specifically looking for but are nevertheless useful and interesting.  Another person said that he tweets medical sites and library information that is intended for a new class.  The class instructor also places his instructions and updates on Twitter.

Governments have begun to appreciate the value of Twitter, especially when dealing with emergencies and disasters.  During the October, 2007 raging wildfires in Southern California, there were burned cell towers and communication lines.  The LA and San Diego Fire Departments used SMS and Twitter to communicate with their people to coordinate fire fighting efforts.  Since natural and man-made disasters are usually fast moving, unpredictable events, responders need real-time information to deal with these quickly changing situations.  The CDC tweets on Twitter as CDCEmergency, providing real-time epidemiological tracking information on the H1N1 flu virus.  It also provides links to the latest information on E. coli.  Since news stories are triaged according to the importance of the day’s events, the E. coli information may not appear on the morning or evening news, but if you follow CDCemergency, you will get the news update as soon as the CDC releases it.  The  Food  and  Drug Administration (FDA) tweets as FDArecalls, and posts notifications of FDA recalls, market withdrawals, and safety alerts.  Doctors and hospitals are beginning to use Twitter to make their presence known.  Individuals may tweet to discuss or get support for managing problems such as weight control, smoking cessation, controlling diabetes, etc.  If you continue to follow individuals for a period of time, and begin thinking about their tweets, you realize that you have developed a sense of these individuals.

I have to confess, I was very lukewarm about Twitter, but the more I looked at it the more I saw its potential.  Twitter is experiential.  The more you use it, the more uses you may find for it.   The  more tweets by specific individuals that you read, the more understanding you get of that person.  Twitter is changing how we communicate and how we come to understand people.  It is a vehicle of the Net Generation–the generation that has grown up with the Internet.  They have grown up with tools that allow them to communicate and form relationships with each other over distances.  They  know that information is provided quickly, efficiently, uncensored, and in-real time.  Twitter is showing us a new way to communicate.

Before I sign off, I would like to digress for a moment.  At the last Chapter meeting I was presented with the Robert Preston Lee Award for writing this column.  I thank you for the honor and privilege of being given such a prestigious award.  (I’m still speechless about it.)  I never thought I would be writing this column for so long.  At press time, I always expect my editor to thank me for my service and say no one is really reading the column.  To my surprise, I am still here,  So, I want to thank my colleagues, especially my editors (past and present)—Nancy  Calabretta, Linda Katz, and Rachel Resnick—for their support and patience.  Finally, I want to thank you, the reader, for putting up with my quirkiness and giving me the honor of your time to read this column.  THANK YOU!!

Have a safe and great summer.  C U @ the movies.

Here is a selection of healthcare-related twitterers.  Go to http://twitter.com/ and append any of these screen names to the URL:
AIDSgov
BioMedCentral
BirdFluGov
CDCemergency
CDC_eHealth
cochranecollab
FDArecalls
Girlshealth
healthfinder
medlibs
NIHforFunding
NIHforHealth
nihlib
niosh
womenshealth