Do You Twitter?

You've heard of Twitter. Aside from Facebook, it's the fastest growing social networking site on the web. Business Week and PC Magazine are following Twitter closely, Business Week focusing on business applications. News reporters, White House staff, political campaigns, college and high school students, job seekers and marketers are making connections through Twitter. Major businesses such as Dell are incorporating twitter into their business plans. Everywhere you turn, you hear the term Twitter. Facebook wants Twitter as does Google.

So what is Twitter and how does it affect you? Twitter posts, called tweets, are microblogs. Each entry is 140 characters or less. When you join Twitter, you are asked a seemingly innocuous question, "What are you doing?" and each tweet starts from that question. Your answers to the question become your blog posts and can be followed by your friends or anyone, just as in a regular blog. Tweets at first seem very personal, but they quickly can take on more elaborate objectives. Dell Computers claims to have made $3 million from Twitter.

The video below, Twitter In Plain English is extracted from the Twitter site. Notice that it's appeal is personal, connect to friends, family, co-workers. Nielsen, which tracks Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites, saw Twitter leap "... 1,448 percent from this time last year... according to Monday data from Nielsen. The micro-blogging site logged 18.2 million unique visitors in May 2009, up from 1.2 million in May 2008, and up 7 percent from April 2009" as reported by Chloe Albanesius in PC Magazine online June 22. Albanesius in the same article also notes the continuing dominance of Facebook with 144.3 million unique visitors in May!

Twitter obviously has broad appeal beyond the personal. 140 characters could be a short poem, a haiku, or it could be the lead sentence of a news article, a series of business marketing slogans or a call to organize around an issue, a vote, a sale. It is attractive to journalists who are taught to write the jist of a story in one sentence (who, what, when, and why?) and to generations raised on Headline News of television and radio. "Chrysler Corporation no longer in bankruptcy, ready to start producing cars again." is perfect as a tweet. or "Berkshire Athenaeum announces Summer Schedule of Workshops starting July 2. Sign Up Now!" or "Gas Prices Increase As Summer Vactions begin, $3 gas prices expected midSummer." or "I am reading Deborah Micek's Twitter Revolution. Found it at the Berkshire Athenaeum. Check it out!"

The possibilities of Twitter are endless. It's free and easy to join. I have a Twitter account. You can view my Twitter profile and twitter entries by going to http://twitter.com/aboutbizness.

See Business Week's article, Twitter: Building Businesses Tweet By Tweet and their handy guide to TwitterSpeak. See how it may fit into your own business plan and strategic thinking.




Want to learn more about Twitter? Sign up for our Technical Services librarian, Jeremy Goldstein's Thursday, July 16 workshop on Twitter. It starts at 6p.m. Sign up at the Reference Desk or by calling 413-499-9480 ext 202.

Marketplace Whiteboards On The Financial Crisis

Marketplace is National Public Radio's Business program. It is broadcast Monday thru Friday at 6:30 p.m. on public radio stations nationally. In the Berkshires it may be heard on WFCR and WAMC, each on FM. As with newspapers and magazines Marketplace has a multimedia presence online, where its programs, special reports, podcasts and videos may be downloaded and heard as well as viewed. The program is uniformly informative and worth listening to if you're trying to understand what's going on behind the headlines in the business, financial and working worlds.

For the past year Marketplace online has had a continuing feature, "The Whiteboard", on getting behind the financial crisis and taking the mystery out of Credit Default Swaps, Collatoralized Debt Obligations, Write Downs, Mortgage Backed Securities, and other arcane terms and making them clear. "The Whiteboard" features Marketplace Senior Editor, Paddy Hirsch, in short, graphic, 5 to 10 minute presentations. In this posting I am including 1 of these Whiteboards, as an example, for you to view:

"Uncorking CDOs (Collatorized Debt Obligations)" from October 3, 2008 (Marketplace online) .

When viewing this 6 minute presentation, you may need to watch more than one time. These are after all complicated matters. But Paddy Hirsch does an excellent job. The presentations are never boring. If fact they only got better the more I repeated them. You may understand them quicker than me. But Paddy Hirsch has provided us with an excellent reference backdrop. If you have RealPlayer or Windows Media Player you should be able to view. If not viewable you may need to download a recent version of Quicktime.




After viewing this and other Whiteboards you'll have a better understanding of the financial system and how it works, relation to mortgages, credit card debt, student loans, General Motors bankruptcy and their impact, or, as Paddy Hirsch puts it, "the financial mess we're all in". For the full list of Paddy Hirsch's Marketplace Whiteboards click here. You won't regret time spent.

Another website that continues to illuminate with clear explanations, is Investopedia, which we have featured in the past and continue to consult for accurate, informed discussion. Marketplace and Investopedia are worthy of your Bookmarks.

The Berkshire Athenaeum has 2 dictionaries of finance and banking you may want to consult:
1) Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms by John Downes and Jordan Goodman; and 2) Dictionary of Banking and Finance by P.H. Collin.