LL-L "Administrativia" 2010.06.12 (01) [EN]

Sun Jun 13 00:13:09 UTC 2010

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*L O W L A N D S - L - 12 June 2010 - Volume 01*
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>

Subject: LL-L "Administrativia" 2010.06.10 (01) [EN]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
>
> Subject: Administrativia
>
> Thanks, Ben. It’s nice to hear from you again. And, yes, I did
> understand your German.
>
> I don’t know what others will think about your Twitter idea. I
> personally have an account but am not using it. Somehow I don’t get
> the point, what with all those tiny snippets flying around.
>
> Let's talk about it again if people like the idea.

Dear Lowlanders,

I've been starting to use Twitter a bit again in order to think how it might
be put to work for LL-L.

I think one problem people have with Twitter is that they come to it with
the same expectations they have from Facebook, and this just makes it seem
like a drier, less useful form of Facebook.

When you look at your Twitter home page, in some ways it does look like a
hobbled version of Facebook: you see the list of recent tweets from all your
followings down the middle that seems to correspond to the Facebook newsfeed
from all your friends, and the links to a list of your following and
followers to one side, plus a box at the top for tweeting in, which
corresponds to Facebook's status.

But the similarity is only superficial.

On Facebook, if someone wants to befriend you, you have to either befriend
them back or insult them, even if all they ever talk about is football or
wine. In Twitter, there's no implication of mutual friendship, and you can
just follow people whose postings you like to read, and you don't worry
about whether they follow you or not (actually, it would be a breach of
etiquette to try to persuade someone to follow you).

In Twitter the recent tweets list, which contains tweets by all the people
you follow, is called your "Home Timeline". This is pretty much like the
Facebook newsfeed, but in Twitter you can create other timelines. This is
done by creating lists to which you add any people that you follow who have
interests relevant to that list. So for example, although I've used Twitter
very little, I do currently have a "deaf" list and a "goth" list. Anyone
looking at those lists will see a "Deaf Timeline" and "Goth Timeline" full
of posts by the people I follow who are interested in these subjects.

While Facebook is mainly about people, in Twitter there's much more emphasis
on the content. One way good content is strengthened is by retweeting. If a
tweet seems worth disseminating further, you simply click on its Retweet
button and it gets posted in your account for all your followers to read or
be reminded of.

One feature that I think makes Twitter a good option for us Lowalnders to
try is the idea of "hashtags". A hashtag is just a word with a hash in front
of it in a tweet. For example, suppose you tweet something of interest to
people who want to know about Scots. Then if you put a hash before the word
"Scots" in the tweet, people looking for Scots-interest content will tend to
find it, because they'll tend to do searches for hashtags like "#scots".

Think about this in the context of a mailing list like LL-L. We post an
article, and whether it's of lasting interest or not, it goes into the
Archive where it's semi-forgotten. Its only hope for ever being aired again
is if someone somehow recalls it and wants to know about it again badly
enough to spend some time with the search engine. Even then, they'll
probably just read it and forget about it again: nobody actually reposts or
in any other way draws anybody's attention to old postings. When somebody
posts interesting literature or an interesting or even innovative
etymological trail, its exposure is limited.

Now imagine if I find something in the Archive that I think other people
would want to see. What can I do to give it exposure? Well, I can tweet it.

Here's an example of an actual retweet where someone has wanted to
disseminate further information about the Scots word "wheesht":

"RT @CalMerc: Useful Scots word: Wheesht - http://bit.ly/wh335ht #scots
#scotland #language #scottish"

Here, the "retweet" (RT) "mentions" (@) the tweeter "CalMerc" (the
Calidonian Mercury newspaper, as you can discover by clicking) and the
original tweeter, faced with stuffing the URL:

http://heritage.caledonianmercury.com/2010/06/11/useful-scots-word-wheesht/00932

into a 140 word message, has gone to bit.ly (or you could use tiny.url) to
have it reduced to http://bit.ly/wh335ht

The tweeter has then added a list of tags: "#scots #scotland #language
#scottish", so if anyone now searches on "#scots" in Twitter, this will
appear somewhere in the search results. You can narrow the search by using
more tags, eg "#scots #language" will find this tweet, and others that are
about both Scots and language.

Actually, the original tweeter has wasted some precious letters here, they
could have just typed:

"RT @CalMerc: Useful #Scots word: Wheesht - http://bit.ly/wh335ht
#scotland<http://bit.ly/wh335ht#scotland>#language #scottish"

Now think about what Ron often does on the list here. He updates the website
and posts information to the list about the updates. Sometimes he reminds
people of what's there, or to send more Wren material. This appears on the
list, which is a bit like preaching to the converted, and then is forgotten
again.

But what if he tweeted it, with a tiny URL to the Wren site or whatever? You
can see the following tweet in action on my Twitter account at
http://twitter.com/DeafGoth/ :

"More Wren translations, please! http://bit.ly/cxorD6 Any #language or
#dialect. #Lowlands_L"

Moreover, anybody on the list, not just Ron can do this to draw the world's
attention to any interesting thread from the archives or their own or
favourite writing from the members' area. Anyone subsequently searching for,
say "#dialect" might come across it - or perhaps I could have chosen the
hashtags better. How about periodically tweeting it with hashtags for
missing but much-desired languages for example?

Better still, some of your followers might retweet it, and their followers
might retweet it. Someone coming across it through a search on the
"#dialect" might be curious about the "#Lowlands-L" hashtag and click on it
and discover the list, and not just that, he'll be presented with a whole
timeline of some of its best content: good first impressions!

One thing we would really want would be a hashtag representing the list. I
used #Lowlands_L above (you can't have a hyphen) and now clicking on that
will find all postings relevant to the list! At the moment you can try that
on my account, and you'll find that it only gets one hit (this tweet), so is
probably suitable.

Imagine what can happen when Ron (or any Lowlander) tweets something like
this. If I'm following him (which I'm not - something we need to rectify,
Ron!), then I'll see this in one of my timelines and all I need to do to
disseminate it further is to click the "Retweet" button. If lots of
Lowlanders had Twitter accounts it would be even better.

What do you think?

Sandy Fleming
http://twitter.com/DeafGoth/

----------

From: From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>

Subject: Administrativia

Thanks for doing this investigation for us, Sandy. This is really useful.

I take it we’ll first have to build up a sizable follower base.

I’ll look into it (and follow you) to see how this works. I encourage others
to follow suit ... or rather follow us and each other.

One of the things that have kept me away from the computer so long is
suddenly glorious weather, a real change. Such a beautiful early summer day
may not even be legal in all states.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

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