Learn phenomena at the confluence of societal evolution and technology: Twitter, micro-blogs, and their ilk
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| Keith: Hi I’m Keith |
| Sadia: Hey and I’m Sadia. |
| Keith: The focus of this lesson is micro-blogging |
| Sadia: and Twitter. |
| Keith: So Micro-blogging-- or, what that means is blogging very short entries generally between 100 and 140 and 250 characters-- this has been around since the early days of blogging. |
| Sadia: What’s a character? |
| Keith: Well, a character is a letter or a number. |
| Sadia: In the early days of blogging, a lot of bloggers wrote these long entries on different topics, they went on an on, but other bloggers would post really short posts usually about some part of their personal lives. |
| Keith: And micro-blogging, which was commonly referred to as short-form blogging, that didn't even have a buzzword attached to it until recently-- which is probably partly due to the growing popularity of Twitter, which we'll talk about in a second. |
| Sadia: Ok microblogging, blogging in short form, you probably remember from an earlier Buzzword lesson that blogging refers to keeping a regularly updated website where posts appear in reverse time order, so the newest posts are at the top of the page. Micro-blogging is the exact same thing-- |
| Keith: It’s just fewer words, once again, it’s shorter –maybe 140-150 characters. |
| Sadia: The growing popularity of text messaging, instant messaging, and email have all helped micro-blogging grow in popularity, too. |
| Keith: That's right; texting, instant messaging, and emailing can all help users post content to their micro-blogs quickly and easily. But there's one service that has the micro-blogging market cornered-- and what that means – to have a market cornered is to...have almost full control of it. |
| Sadia: Right – to be the biggest, the best, the most well-known. |
| Keith: And the microblogging market is cornered by... |
| Sadia: I have a feeling I might know what service you're talking about... What is it? |
| Keith: It’s Twitter! |
| Sadia: Ah, of course! So, twitter.com was launched in 2006, I think. It's a social networking – which you learned about – and micro-blogging service that lets users send and read each others' updates. |
| Keith: Posts to Twitter are limited to 140 characters and are posted on a user's personal page |
| and delivered to people who have subscribed to that user's update. What does that mean, “subscribe to updates”? |
| Sadia: To subscribe means to sign up, to receive something. So you can subscribe to a magazine – it will get sent to your house, you can subscribe to a newspaper. On Twitter, you can subscribe to someone’s updates, which means you can receive their updates, maybe through email or through a text message. |
| Keith: So any time that person writes a micro blog, writes a post, you receive it. |
| Sadia: Right, you receive it...if you subscribe. |
| Keith: So in effect, Twitter allows users to connect to the people who they share common interests. Using Twitter is a lot like broadcasting text messages-- it’s like putting a text message out there to the public so everyone can see. |
| Sadia: Broacast – that word you also learned earlier. To broadcast means to make something public, so to broadcast a text message means to make your short messages public. And actually, it is possible to send updates to Twitter using your mobile phone with SMS technology. What’s SMS again? |
| Keith: SMS, one more time, that’s Short Messaging Service. And, that’s on a cellphone a lot of the times. |
| Sadia: In fact, I think that was the original way to post to Twitter – using SMS. But now you can post on the Internet. |
| Keith: And Twitter users form their own sub-communities, like a mini community but are all united by their love of the service – how they love Twitter – and how they frequently use, also, Twitter-inspired buzzwords. |
| Sadia: Ahh yes, this is becoming more and more common I think, adding the letters ‘t-w’, like Twitter to the beginning of other words, for example “universe” becomes “Twitterverse”. The Twitterverse is the community of Twitter users. |
| Keith: So "to follow" someone is to be updated by the service whenever that person tweets--what is that “tweet” |
| Sadia: “To tweet” is to post something to Twitter. |
| Keith: (laughs) And ah “followers" are those people who subscribe to a user's updates. |
| Sadia: So “to follow” someone is to subscribe to their updates and “followers” are the people who subscribe to your updates |
| Keith: And It may actually be getting out of control, don’t you think? |
| Sadia: It might be. So we were talking about Twitter-inspired words. I think, ah, there are even Twitter related versions of everyday sayings-- for example, "See ya later" becomes "Tweet ya later" on Twitter. |
| Keith: Ughh (laughs) |
| Sadia: (laughs) |
| Keith: I don’t like it for some reason. It...it’s not English. (laughs) |
| Sadia: It’s not English but... |
| Keith: It’s a buzzword... |
| Sadia: ….not only that, it’s...just...not very clever. But anyway, Twitter actually has people who can’t stand it, who are detractors or skeptics, people who don’t like Twitter. But it seems as though people are starting to hop on the bandwagon, they’re starting to use Twitter, it’s like a chain reaction, certain people join and then more people and then more and more...I think it’s 6 million to be exact. |
| Keith: Wow that’s a lot of people. Listeners, do you tweet? |
| Sadia: If not, do you understand the appeal of Twitter? Do you understand why people tweet? Let us know your thoughts in the comments! |
| -- |
| Chihiro: Let's take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| Daniel: blog (noun) [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: short for weblog, a frequently updated website with |
| short opinions or descriptions of activities |
| Daniel: blog (noun) [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Daniel: blog (noun) [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: Next: |
| Daniel: blog (verb) [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: to write or maintain a weblog |
| Daniel: blog (verb) [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Daniel: blog (verb) [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: The next word is: |
| Daniel: blogger [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: a person who maintains a blog |
| Daniel: blogger [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Daniel: blogger [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: Next: |
| Daniel: text (verb) [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: to send someone a text message by cellular phone |
| Daniel: text (verb) [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Daniel: text (verb) [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: And now we have: |
| Daniel: connect [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: to join or bring together |
| Daniel: connect [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Daniel: connect [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: Next word is: |
| Daniel: update [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: the most current information or version |
| Daniel: update [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Daniel: update [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: And now we have: |
| Daniel: broadcast [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: to make public, to announce to a large audience |
| Daniel: broadcast [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Daniel: broadcast [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: Next: |
| Daniel: post [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: to publish on a website or blog |
| Daniel: post [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Daniel: post [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: Now we have: |
| Daniel: be updated [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: to be given the latest information |
| Daniel: be updated [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Daniel: be updated [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: And the last word is: |
| Daniel: subscribe [natural native speed] |
| Chihiro: to receive a newspaper, magazine, or service regularly |
| Daniel: subscribe [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Daniel: subscribe [natural native speed] |
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