Showing posts with label Twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Twitter. Show all posts

Thursday, July 13, 2017

one time i was mentioned it a book and it was cool and now it can be you being mentioned in a book and feeling cool!

hello friends! as you may already know, Tinamarie Vella and I are working on a book (a primer, really) to help archives, libraries, and museums use Twitter more effectively. i know, i know, OH GOD ANOTHER BOOK ON TWITTER SHOOT ME NOW. here's the thing: i've done the research, and the book we're trying to write doesn't actually yet exist in any sort of contemporary incarnation. it's pretty odd but there it is. i decided to write this book for pragmatic reasons, in response to watching organizations (colleges rather than college libraries in specific for the most part) be absolutely terrible at Twitter. how, after all these years, can one still be terrible at Twitter?! so i pitched this book as a more comprehensive followup to my now super old and outdated article, "Making Twitter Work: A Guide for the Uninitiated, the Skeptical, and the Pragmatic".

lately though, i've fallen behind on writing, because, well, writing about Twitter is UGH. i know i have some good advice to share, but i also know that a lot of articles and presentations about HOW TO SOCIAL MEDIA GOOD are pretentious and pedantic in the worst way. i've spent a lot of time thinking about how to toe the line between pragmatic and pretentious, and at one point i even tried to re-pitch the book as a collection of chapters by different authors. that did not go down well with my publisher (and i'm sure Tinamarie wouldn't love going from a co-author to a co-editor either, so it's probably best it didn't go down this way). BUTTTTTTTTT, i still feel this book needs other voices to really useful. Tinamarie and I know what we're talking about, and we're librarians, so obviously research is actually super fun times for us, but i still feel like there's a lot of untold stories out there. sooooooo, as a compromise to the edited chapters idea, we pitched the idea of including brief case studies throughout the book, in order to use real world examples to highlight all the innovative ways archives, libraries, and museums are using Twitter to engage their communities.

which brings me to my point (finally). we desperately want to hear from you. we created a form to collect stories from people about how their organizations are dealing with Twitter (or why you're NOT dealing with Twitter, that's an important story too!) originally we just wanted to interview people to get this information, but we're having trouble tracking down people who A) are involved with their organization's social media presence, and B) want to talk about how they feel their organizations are succeeding or failing on Twitter. so if you fall into both those categories (or if you know of someone who does, and you want to recommend we take a look at a specific organization/account) we would ADORE you for taking a look at our form.

most of the questions allow for long-form answers, and not all will apply to everyone, so we recommend you read through all the questions first, and then just answer the ones that help you tell your story. (remember those old school tests that started with "read all the instructions first" and then the last instruction was "don't actually answer any of the questions"? this is like that, only instead of testing your ability to follow directions i am trying to not test your patience. because there are a lot of questions. and you will probably hate me if you try to answer all of them. and i don't want to hate me because i have childhood issues that have resulted in me desperately needing people to like me. tmi? tmi.)

ideally, we'd like to feature you and your organization but we understand that some people don't feel comfortable speaking in the Royal We, or might be uncomfortable talking about less than successful stuff, so you can submit anonymously, or just name yourself or your organization. we will include as much or as little identifying information as you want.

here's the form:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScaXb_XHEogCF2qvgrsxg1lOQpqi6_gzlLlCCdlOMhvmBWDKw/viewform?usp=sf_link

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Twitter RSS Feed Cheat Sheet (Redux)

Some notes on constructing searches that I've learned the hard way, but you don't have to:
  • Find a handy url-encoding cheat-sheet, like this one: http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/html/topics/urlencoding.htm. You will have to replace special characters  (@, #, :, etc.) with their url-encoded version.

  • + and %20 (a url-encoded space) seem to be interchangeable when constructing complex search queries. If one doesn't work in between each search parameter, try the other. (Replace the "+" with OR for searches that return any of the keywords/search parameters, as opposed to all the keywords/search parameters.)

  • To see how Twitter itself is constructing a query, do the search in their advanced search (https://twitter.com/#!/search-advanced), then follow this formula to construct your feed:

    Take the url that is produced from your search and replace the first part (https://twitter.com/#!/search/) with the rss version (http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=).

    You will go from this: https://twitter.com/#!/search/librarian%20tattoo
    to this:
    http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q= librarian%20tattoo

  • You can probably replace the ".atom" with ".rss" if you prefer. (As pointed out by @calimae.)

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Here are some pre-constructed feeds, where you just replace the bold info with the info you want to use:

Hashtag search: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23library

User mention search: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%40val_forrestal

Specific user's entire timeline: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=from%3Aval_forrestal

Keyword search: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=research+paper

Location + keyword search: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?geocode=40.744544%2C-74.027593%2C5.0mi&q=+research+paper+near%3A%22hoboken%2C+nj%22+within%3A5mi

User mention + hashtag: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%40val_forrestal+%23library

User + hashtag: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=from%3Aval_forrestal+%23library

Hashtag + date: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23library%20since%3A2012-01-24%20until%3A2012-01-25



*For the original version of this post, with more details, see: http://theinfobabe.blogspot.com/2011/06/twitter-rss-feed-creation-cheat-sheet.html

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Twitter RSS feed creation cheat sheet

Ok, so apparently Twitter is no longer supporting RSS?
I tried doing an advanced search, and, sure enough, the "Feed for this query" button was gone. Then, when I mentioned it on Twitter, @shelitwits said it was still there for her, and when I checked again, it was back...
So... Yes, perhaps I'm going crazy and I just imagined it went away, but now I'm nervous. For now, search feeds are still working for me, whether the button is there or not, so I created a quick cheat sheet for myself, should I need to create a feed from a Twitter search without the handy button. I figured I'd post it here, for my own, and your, handy reference, should you need it. (Obviously, replace the bold text in the search strings with your own search terms/parameters.)


Hashtag search: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23CiL2009


User mention search: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%40scwLibrary


Keyword search: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=research+paper (replace the "+" with OR for searches that return any of the keywords, as opposed to all the keywords.)


Location + keyword search: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?geocode=40.744544%2C-74.027593%2C5.0mi&q=+research+paper+near%3A%22hoboken%2C+nj%22+within%3A5mi


You can get the location code from location-tagged tweets in your search results, or from your profile page if you've enabled location-aware tagging on Twitter. You can also change the proximity parameter, set here to pick up tweets within 5 miles.


Also, I know it's redundant having the location & proximity twice, but this is how the feed generator creates the feed. I tried adding it to Google reader with only one or the other, and for me it worked with just the location code part intact, but did not work when I tried it just using the city and state part (which would have made life easier, since you could just plug that info in without having to look up a complicated location code, but hey, that figures, right?!)


Now, I realize that if Twitter completely stops supporting RSS, these feeds will probably no longer work, so let's just hope they don't do that. I tried using an RSS feed creator to make a feed out of the search results page (as recommended by @bibrarian,) but it didn't want to work for me (it said the page couldn't be found...)


I really hope Twitter rescinds its no-RSS stance, because I can't imagine administrating an institutional page without it. If I can't regularly monitor certain searches, that really cuts down on Twitter's usefulness as an outreach tool.


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UPDATE: Cynthia at LearningLibTech posted some additional details on creating an RSS feed from a specific user's timeline. Check it out here: http://cynng.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/twitter-search-rss-feed/ (and thanks to Desirae for sharing the link!)


UPDATE2: Thanks to ProfHacker for also linking to this post. I also hope my linking to posts that link to this post doesn't trigger infinite recursion and break the internet.


UPDATE3: the Sociable has created a feed generator for Twitter lists: http://sociable.co/2011/05/05/as-twitter-protects-its-ecosystem-heres-how-to-create-an-rss-feed-of-a-twitter-list/ (Thanks to Paul for sharing the link in the comments!)


UPDATE4: In response to a request by Twitter user @filip_struharik, I figured out how to combine user mention and user searches with hashtag searches. They work as follows:


User mention + hashtag: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%40val_forrestal+%23library
User + hashtag: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=from%3Aval_forrestal+%23library


The difference between the two is that the first feed returns all results where the user @val_forrestal *and* the hashtag library appear. The second returns only results where the user @val_forrestal *uses* the hashtag library in one of her tweets (aka only tweets with the keyword "library" from that specific user's timeline.)


UPDATE5: Here's how to do searches that are restricted to a date or set of dates (or just since or up to a certain date).


http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23KEYWORD%20since%3A2012-01-24%20until%3A2012-01-25


...where KEYWORD = your hashtag, and the since/until are your start/end dates. You can leave out the "%23" before KEYWORD if you want it to be a simple keyword search, instead of a hashtag search.



Friday, July 31, 2009

Twitter for Libraries preso follow-up

Ok, I haven't listened to the recording yet (and am dreading it), but I have to say that presenting strictly in an online format at yesterday's Handheld Librarian conference definitely threw me off a little, so I'm sorry if I sounded super nervous (it always makes me uncomfortable when a presenter sounds nervous.) Anyway, I underestimated how much I rely on reading people's expressions to direct my talks (bored, confused, nodding in agreement...), and the radio silence (and relative chat silence) kind of left me flailing a bit. Because of that, I feel like there were some questions/issues I didn't fully address, so I just wanted to do a follow-up post to clarify and expand on some of those issues.

First of all, in case you missed it (it's ok if you were in Joe Murphy's SMS talk, he's teh awsum), here are the slides: http://www.slideshare.net/val_forrestal/twitter-for-libraries-handheld-librarian-709

One of the biggest concerns people had was: What should libraries be tweeting about? I tried to express that that really depends on your audience, and you have to cater to what you think they will find interesting/helpful/informative, but I understand that getting started can seem a little overwhelming, so here are some good posts that talk about how precisely libraries can use Twitter:
Those pretty much cover the spectrum of what tweet from our library account (@scwLibrary). After the conference I was kicking myself for not just going to our page so I could show everyone what we tweet about (and that page is less controversial than my own Twitter feed, which I felt really guilty about showing everyone because of privacy issues for the people I follow - because some of their feeds are private/protected, and so I had to just show it super fast and then leave the page, which was probably dizzying for everyone, kind of like this sentence.)

Another thing that came up was finding the "correct" hashtag for a topic or event. I still maintain that the best way to do this is to a.) try searching some possible hashtags by guessing and seeing which is the most popular; or b.) just ask the twittersphere (ex. "hey does anyone know the official hashtag for the Handheld Librarian conference today?"). Your followers or people searching for the same event/topic by name will usually let you know the answer. However, there are places where you can "register" a hashtag, and it's possible that people do use these as hashtag directories, even if they are not widely adopted right now, so I'll mention a few:
(For some really good info on the history and usefulness of hashtags, see here.)

Speaking of hashtags, another thing I completely forgot to mention: there's a fairly new hashtag going around for recommending librarians to follow. This is an off-shoot of a popular trend called "follow friday", where people recommend their favorite people to follow every Friday. Anyway, if you're looking for librarians to follow to get you started, do a Twitter search for #followalibrarian (or just click on the handy link I made for you there, heh...)

Someone also asked for examples of how people are using Twitter in educational/classroom settings. I think this post has some great advice/links for how instructors can use the medium: http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2009/07/21/100-serious-twitter-tips-for-academics/

You can also follow KSU professor Michael Wesch's blog, Digital Ethnography (he often experiments with using social media in his classes), or @itsanno on Twitter (she mentioned recently that she will be using Twitter with the students in one of her upcoming classes.)

Ok, so this is a long post, so I'll wrap it up now. I think at some point I will do a follow-up to this follow-up, with some tips for more advanced users. With 200 people in a presentation, it's really hard to know how much time to spend on the basics (as I'm sure there were some beginners there) and the advanced tips (for you "power users"). Some future topics I'd like to cover:
  • Twitter integration w/blogs, Facebook, websites, etc.
  • Mashups (using social media aggregation sites like FriendFeed or Netvibes)
  • Twitter mobile apps (which I really wish I had covered, seeing as this was a conference about mobile technology!)
  • Twitter for reference
Is there anything I missed? Any lingering questions/comments/doubts? Let me know here in the comments, or on Twitter (@val_forrestal).

Monday, May 11, 2009

Social Media Snobbery (or, Twitter is a tool, but you don't have to be.)

(This article was cross-posted over at LISNews.)

If someone corrects me one more time when I say that I “twittered” something (“um, you mean you tweeted?”) I am going to scream. Really. Right at them. And is the term “social media” passé already? I un-followed the person who tweeted that about thirty seconds after I read that tweet. See, the thing is, I really love Twitter. I follow smart people, who have interesting discussions all day. It’s wonderful. And for the people in my life who say that it’s sad that I have to find those kinds of relationships online, I say: “well why can’t you be more interesting then? Why do you make me go outside our friendship to find satisfying, intellectual conversation? YOU forced me into this!” Ahem. Sorry. Anyway, my point… Ah, yes: Twitter is just a medium. It’s just another method of communication, and in the same way it drives me bonkers when people say it breeds stupidity and hysteria (more so than any other medium? Really? Cable news anyone?...) it also drives me crazy when people act like it’s an exclusive club. So if I don’t get the terminology right, or I don't use the right hashtag, or if I say I just use the Twitter website instead of the Twitter app du jour (Tweetdeck, Tweetie, Seesmic, take your choice...) I’m persona non grata?

Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s got to be rules, right? Seriously, if you only send updates telling me about your new blog posts, or trying to sell your services, or to post pictures of your cat (ok that last one I would probably forgive, and actually secretly enjoy) I will most likely not follow you. As with any community, online or not, it is wise to spend some time getting to know the culture and attempting to fit in to a certain degree. But if no one ever goes out on a limb, there will be no innovation, no growth in the community. We wouldn’t have retweets, or #followfriday, or any other cool uses for the services that weren’t imagined within the first weeks of its debut.

Do you remember when “web 2.0” was all the rage? And do you also remember how anyone who actually worked in any way with web 2.0 was no longer allowed to call it that lest they incur the derision of all their web-savvy colleagues? If you tell me that I can’t use “social media” anymore either, I’m running out of names to call what I do. Seriously, I’m about 5 minutes away from calling myself the “kewl stuff on teh intarwebz” librarian, and nobody wants that. Ok I’m lying, I want that, I totally do. But I can tell you right now that my boss isn’t going to go for it, so can we all chill out with the social media snobbery already? Maybe all the Twitter/Facebook/FriendFeed/whatever-haters will stop picking on us so much if we stop being so darn obnoxious to them… although probably not.

(For anyone not in the super-cool Twitter club already, here’s a cheat sheet to all the Twitter-related stuff mentioned here: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/03/the-ultimate-guide-for-everything-twitter/. Oh, and I’m val_forrestal on Twitter, and I promise not to make you feel stupid, even if you still call it “web 2.0”.)

Friday, March 20, 2009

I'd like to take a moment to whine about all your whining. Thank you.

I feel like much ado has been made lately about Twitter. I shouldn't even tell you that Twitter is a micro-blogging service, and instead imply that if you don't know what it is, you live under a rock and should be ashamed of yourself. But the truth is, if you don't know or care what micro-blogging is, I would much rather you didn't know about it, because then you couldn't possibly complain about its existence.

I've been using Twitter for awhile now (not sure about how long, but long enough to have posted 328 updates...) When I first learned about it, I didn't get it either. It seemed silly to me that I would want to post/read status updates all day. So, for awhile, because I thought it was stupid, I just didn't use it. Imagine that. And then at some point I gave it a try, and believe it or not, I managed to find some value in it. I subscribed to the updates of other librarians, and they posted links to interesting things: articles, videos, websites, etc... and that was cool. Plus it created a network of people in my field who could be tapped for impromptu surveys (who's using what technology and how successful has it been?) Sure, there's some lots of "getting my morning coffee"/banal chatter too, but you learn to filter out the noise after awhile.

Recently I also started up a Twitter account for my library (http://twitter.com/scwLibrary), and on there I (we) can subscribe to all sorts of science, technology and engineering people and organizations, so I get fed all kinds of great sources in that area. I can also use that account to broadcast (retweet) those links as well as interesting ones I've found myself. I can also use it as a quick way to post brief communications about the library (see: stapler crisis '09) that don't warrant a blog post or website announcement.

Right. So all I'm saying is that I have found some value in the service. I'm not an evangelist for it though (as I matter of fact I don't even recommend it to people unless I think it would serve a specific purpose for them) because I realize that to a lot of people it just doesn't make any sense. And that's fine. But I feel like the haters reeeeeeally enjoy hating on this one (check out this video, which, I have to admit is kind of funny, but also pretty insulting.)

Still, web 2.0, or whatever you crazy kids are calling it these days, is all about trying new things, and if you don't like them, or see a purpose for them, you don't have to use them. I just don't quite understand the culture of tearing down things we don't understand, or don't think we need. It's so damn hipster if you ask me... Anything mainstream is evil and stupid.

Still, I find Twitter to pretty much be what you make of it. If you and your friends use it as a way to just keep track of what you're all up to, then those "mundane" updates can actually be a way to get more insight into each other's lives, and to effortlessly "keep up" with each other (and also make the whole thing look kind of stupid if you're basing your opinion on the updates of people you don't know or care about.) If you use it in a more professional context, it's actually a wonderful way of communicating amongst colleagues and peers, and a great way to tap into a potentially extremely useful collective mind. (I also thought this was another interesting take on what's so cool about Twitter, found, fittingly, via a tweet from Connie Crosby.)

(UPDATE: I just wanted to add this link to a recent ReadWriteWeb post on Twitter, that elaborates on the potential of Twitter way better than I did here...)

(UPDATE 2: Ok, and here's another good link: The Ultimate Guide for Everything Twitter)