With this post, I make a strong case for the use of the social-media, micro-blogging tool Twitter as an extremely useful resource for staying connected to and up-to-the-minute with the green community, or any other community, for that matter. More on that later.
The case for Twitter requires use of the many and ever-growing list of applications to manage, filter, and access the flow of Tweets (comments). While the overall signal-to-noise ratio on Twitter may not be that high (case in point would be Oprah's first Tweets that were little more than noise — dare I say white noise?), there is a high quality, high velocity stream of information, if you just know where and how to look.
The first step to creating a noise filter (to only see and/or block certain Tweets) requires a visit to the Twitter search engine. Navigating without this feature would be like finding something on the internet without a search engine (e.g., Google). Because of the "open architecture" characteristics of Twitter, ALL words in ALL tweets are searchable. Here is link to a search on all tweets that include "Creative Loafing" and "tampa". And since the tweets update in real time, you always have the most up-to-date information.
How do we use Twitter as part of our green community? A basic way is to follow other members of the "green twitterati" — those who are established and/or respected members of the green community who tweet. One of my favorites is Thomas Friedman, NY Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winning author of the must-read book Hot, Flat, and Crowded. Follow this link for a detailed list of Must Follow Green Twitter Feeds, put together by @jetsongreen.
Advanced Twitter users supplement their tweets to create searchable "channels", by appending a"#" symbol, called a "hash" or "hash tag" before the subject or keyword. For example, if you are looking for employment in this sector, check out #greenjobs, or click on this link to learn more about #smartgrid.
If there is interest, in future posts, I will discuss my favorite new Twitter tool, Tweetgrid where you can monitor others (individually or in groups), as well as display information by subject or topic, all updated dynamically and in real-time, creating as many as ten separate "channels" of information. Here's an example. Best of all, with Tweetgrid, no account is required to view tweets. A Twitter account is required to post from Tweetgrid, however.
I invite you to share with the community other Twitter sites of interest. You owe it to yourself to not be a Twitter Quitter.
Please tweet me @paulmess, or read more of my CL Green posts.
This article appears in May 20-26, 2009.