Here is some information that we didn't get to (due to running out of time) during the Twitter workshop on Tuesday. Happy Twittering!

Hashtags:
Twitter users use the “hashtag” to categorize tweets. It’s like using “tags” to categorize online photos and blog entries. For example, if you tweet information about technology, you would include “#technology” somewhere in your tweet. Twitter identifies topics that are “trending” by looking at the hashtags. On your “Home” page in Twitter, look to the right side and you’ll see a listing of the topics that are currently trending. A couple of tips: don’t overuse hashtags. If each of your tweets is a hashtag, you’ll dilute the usefulnees of them, and many people will shy away from you because it seems spammy. Another tip ~ give your hashtag some context. Post a tweet that explains what it is so that your followers will know exactly what it’s talking about. Just remember that hashtags are there to help organize specific tweets for you and your followers. You can also search for tweets that are about a specific topic by searching for hashtags. In the search field on the right side of the screen, type in a hashtag to search for, for example #education. That will bring up all tweets containing that hashtag. This is a good way to discover people that you might want to follow.

Mr. Tweet:
Mr. Tweet is a great way to discover Twitters to follow, and also to get recommendations from your followers. Just go to http://mrtweet.com and allow the application to log in to your Twitter account. You should go ahead and join the Education community. There are many communities to choose from. It’s nice to recommend people after you’ve been following them for awhile. You can do that through Mr. Tweet. Explore the communities by clicking “Communities” at the top of the screen. Then click on the different names of the communities. When you find one to join, click the big button “Join Community”. Follow the people who appeal to you. This is another way to build your PLN.

URL Shorteners:
When you find an interesting article online or you want to share something that you uploaded to Google docs, the URL will usually be very, very long. That’s not a good thing when you’re sharing the URL in a Tweet that can only be 140 characters or less. Luckily there are free web-based “URL shorteners”. I use http://bit.ly to shorten mine. Just go to http://bit.ly and then copy and paste the long URL and click “Shorten”. One of the nice features of this website is that bit.ly will actually keep some data on the sites you are sharing and you can see how many hits were a result of people shortening the URL and sharing it. It’s pretty neat.

Twitpic:
Since Twitter is a microblogging site with no way to share pictures, you’ll have to use another web-based service for sharing your digital pics. I like Twitpic. Just go to http://www.twitpic.com and log in using your Twitter account login and click “Allow” to allow Twitpic to access your Twitter account. Once logged in, click “Upload photo” in the upper right of the screen. Browse to the photo on your computer, add a message, make sure that “Post to Twitter account” is checked, and then click “upload”. Twitpic will post your tweet which will include a link to your photo.