Since Dean told us about using Twitter in ECMP, I’ve been trying it out to see how I might find it helpful in the future. I’ve been slowly trying to establish a PLN like Dean and our presenters have talked about many times. At first I found it to be somewhat of a pain to constantly check the Twitter site. Then, I’m not exactly sure where I heard about it, but I learned about a program called Tweetdeck. A little skeptical, I downloaded the program and began playing around with it. It was amazing. It makes using Twitter so much easier. You simply log in with your twitter account and password and some columns appear. These columns updates from all of the people you follow, when people mention your name, direct messages, and there is room for you to add any columns you want. Oh, and if you use Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn it works with that too! You sign in with your Facebook account and can set it up so it shows your all your friends’ updates, all photo updates, all wall posts. I don’t have a MySpace account, so I’m not exactly sure how it works with MySpace.
The best part of it all, is that you never have to go to these sites. Whenever something new is posted on any of thema little box will pop up in the corner of your screen and will fade away if you choose to ignore it. I have found it to be really handy and has made using Twitter alot easier. Today, Tweetdeck released a new version of the program. Below is a video of some of the new features.
If you’re at all interested in using Twitter, possibly to develop a PLN, or use Facebook on a regular basis (which I’m sure almost all of my ECMP classmates do) you should definitely try out Tweetdeck.
I was trying to get into twitter to put i was having problems remembering it and it just seemed like a hasle. I think it will have lots of value especially during our internships. But ths tweetdeck sounds like a really good idea! I will try it out!
Kelsey, it really is a hassle since it’s pretty boring at first. But once you start following some good people (Dean will really help point you in the right direction) some really useful info starts showing up. There have been a few times where I’ve had some question about random things, tweeted them, and had answers in no time. It will be a great tool for our internships down the road, I’m glad I’ve learned about it now!