Five Days to Twitter Literacy (Twiteracy) – Part I of V

Sharks: the goal this week is to get hip to Twitter. No doubt you have heard the fanfare, even seen the ERE columns about the application of Twitter for recruiting purposes. But the truth is, you just don’t get it. That’s because you haven’t plugged in. So, sharks, I will feed you bite-size morsels of Twitter for the next five blog posts. I will ask you to spend five minutes – tops – each day. At the end of five days, you will be plugged-in, twitter-fabulous.

Day 1. What is Twitter? Some call it microblogging. Such a fancy word, but it doesn’t quite capture the purpose of Twitter. So instead of trying to define it, I'll drop in a visual:

Here's how it works. Millions of folks plug into Twitter, via the website or their mobile phones, to answer the question "What are you doing?" in 140 characters or less. In Twitter lingo, each message is called a "Tweet". Users can "follow" the tweets of other users. What's the big deal? We will get to that in a subsequent post. For now, take my word for it -- it's pretty cool.

Today's homework. Create a Twitter account. This should take less than three minutes.

Don't worry about building your network or finding your friends. We'll do that later, so skip that step. You're ready to send your first tweet! Don't fret too much about what you write, as you haven't built a following yet. In fact, if you want, I will be your first follower, if you follow me. Just use the search bar to search for Peopleshark, and click the "follow" button.

Next post -- building your Twitter network, creating a Twitter persona, some of my favorite Twitter celebrities, the joy of Twitter!