It wasn’t too long ago that twittering was frowned upon. Especially in Christian circles. Those prone to ‘talk[ing] rapidly in a nervous or trivial way’ (Concise Oxford English Dictionary) used to be rounded up and burnt at the stake. Or at least avoided by the vicar during the post-service coffee time.
But we must move with the times. Twittering is now in vogue. In just four years – it launched publicly in July 2006 – twitter.com has become one of the world’s busiest websites.
For the uninitiated, Twitter is a micro-blogging service. People (often referred to in this context as tweeple) are invited to answer the question ‘what’s happening?’ in 140 characters or fewer. And lots do – there are over 50 million tweets a day. The downside of this is that there’s simply too much information to process, so alongside Twitter a raft of other applications has emerged to help grapple with it all. Tweetdeck seems to be emerging as a front-runner, but there are thousands of others to choose from.
Additionally, research* indicates that over 40% of tweets might be most charitably described as ‘pointless babble’. Not exactly in keeping with Jesus’ teaching in the sermon on the mount. As Christian media types should we flee away?
Probably not. Whether Twitter is here to stay or not is (endlessly) debatable. But it’s here now. And behind each tweet is a person. Even the automatic tweets derived from other web content have a human originator somewhere along the line. This means that it’s possible to engage with them. To hear their experiences. To tell them things that they might want – or need – to know.
The recent revamp of the BBC News website is interesting on many levels, but the prominence now afforded to the ‘share this story via Twitter’ function is noteworthy. Equally, the recent tragic shootings in Northumberland and Cumbria have demonstrated that, in some situations, ‘citizen journalism’ can disseminate information more quickly than more traditional newsgathering models. Accuracy, of course, is a moot point.
The beauty of Twitter is its simplicity. You just type text into a status box. No need for any clever web code, or even pictures. It forces you to be succinct – this is not an appropriate medium for a deep and meaningful reflection. Once the text is in, it is instantaneously searchable.
Hash tags (simply keywords prefixed with a # sign) make content more searchable. They act as classifiers, and enable other Twits to see your compelling copy even if they don’t ‘follow’ your every move. During May’s ‘red shirt’ protests in Bangkok, #redshirts became much-used tag, as the city’s twitterati mobilised to give a more balanced view of proceedings than the government’s (admittedly rousing) ‘we love Thailand’ montages might have suggested.
As tweets are by necessity brief, incorporating links to other web content can be helpful. With the 140 character limit, it’s all too easy to waste half of a tweet with a long URL. Web address ‘shorteners’ like bit.ly are the way forwards.
Social media is all about community… and interacting with that community. If you spot something interesting on your travels through the Twittersphere, give a virtual pat on the back. The easy way to publicly acknowledge your Twitter source is to type an @-sign followed by their username (eg: @davidpgiles Great article about Twitter).
Retweeting other people’s (relevant) content is another good way of building community. It also helps others to separate the wheat from the chaff – oft-retweeted individuals are more likely to be informative/interesting/amusing. It’s straightforward to do – just include RT at the front of the message you wish to rebroadcast.
Trending topics – the popular Twitter themes of the day – are of great value to marketeers and headline writers. The twitter.com home page yields this information with no effort at all. It’s then a piece of cake to tailor your content and submit it to the masses who are already talking about what you want to say. In the charity I work for, we were able to tap into the huge World Cup and Wimbledon audiences, simply by adding #worldcup and #wimbledon hash tags to quick summaries about a sports day and Wii tennis session our disabled children had enjoyed.
So what does the Bible say about tweeting? Erm. The best I could come up with was my own paraphrase of Matthew 7:12 – ‘Tweet others as you want them to tweet you.’ Tenuous, perhaps, though the principle is entirely valid.
Love it or hate it, Twitter is currently an important part of our online media landscape. Failure to engage with it could equate to failure to engage with people who may be interested in what we have to say. And that would be an #epicfail.
David Giles (@DavidPGiles)
* Source: http://www.pearanalytics.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Twitter-Study-August-2009.pdf