Here is a useful video I came across on You Tube that briefly and concisely explains what Twitter is and how it works. Well worth a look for anyone curious about Twitter or possibly thinking about subscribing to the site.
The social networking and micro-blogging site Twitter is becoming a increasingly popular communication channel for individuals to communicate (i.e. send and receive) via short text-like messages known as ‘tweets’. People can subscribe and become ‘followers’ to an author’s page to find out what that person is up to, anything new about them etc. As the popularity of Twitter continues to grow the use of the service will no doubt branch out and be used in other contexts e.g. it has already been used politically in the U.S. (2008 Presidential campaign). Twitter appears to be primarily a social networking site that is used for the purposes of ‘self-promotion.’ Though the site is used on a social basis for communicating among e.g. friends and family there may be uses for twitter in an organisational capacity. Twitter could have its uses in organisations that commonly use the form of ‘virtual teams’ to conduct project work. The use of Twitter as a communication medium would provide an alternative channel of communication and one just as easy as e.g. e-mail, texting (sms). The shortness of the ‘tweets’ might make it easier to quickly update colleagues on what stages those within a project team are at as well as what sections of the project requires to be completed. The question of whether Twitter can be viewed as a useful channel to facilitate ‘organisational learning’ remains to be seen. The uses and format of Twitter may alter through time so it might be difficult to envisage how useful Twitter might be for learning purposes within organisations. This of course depends upon how you interpret the concept of learning….
I just came across a useful site by Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester Analyst who researches the social computing industry. It is a short post that outlines the difference between forums, blogs and social networks. For those maybe confused about the differences between these different types of social computing media I think it is well worth a read.
Blogs have been defined as “… frequently modified web pages in which dated entries are listed in reverse chronological sequence” [Herring et al., (2004), p.1]. The entries undertaken by blog users can consist of not only text but also graphics and video.
Nowadays there are several types of social technologies to choose from whether they be used for either personal or organisational reasons. Depending upon the context of use, it is important to distinguish between their differences as well as similarities.
Here I will try to distinguish between how blogs have similarities but also important differences from forums and wikis. These are just some salient points though there are many more open to interpretation.
Blogs and forums are both very useful online tools for enabling collaboration and communication in an online evironment (though blogs can also be used on a personal basis). Forums, similiar to blogs can facilitate a sense of community amongst users through the posting of topics for discussion. Comments to postings can also be left on forums just as in the case of blogs. Forums tend to focus more upon commenting whereas blogs place greater emphasis upon posting. The scale of a forum can be seen to be wider in terms of audience as opposed to a blog. Forums usually accept multiple members whereby anyone with an interest in a particular forum can log on and register. Blogs are more ‘close knit’ in terms of they can be personal or are established on a collective basis for a specific purpose, e.g. a group project. Blogs as well as forums can be monitored though sometimes forums are more regulated than blogs. The length of blog postings normally tend to be longer in content as opposed to those of forums and are structured in a more chronological way. Essentially, forums and blogs are both very useful for the purposes of communication and idea sharing.
(1) Blogs vs. Wikis
A wiki is a very useful piece of social software that is highly applicable when being used in project-based environments. This also applies to blogs. Wikis and blogs are very useful for sharing information. For example, in a project scenario, various ideas and reflections could be captured such as: sharing of project related ideas and experiences; recording of best practices; general organisational issues and reflections upon project or team debriefings. The main principle difference between a blog and a wiki is that anyone can add content to a wiki as well as editing it. This differentiates between how blogs are used in the sense that blog posts cannot be edited once published. Information in a wiki can be regularly updated and altered once published. However in a blog information is primarily updated through the publishing of new posts. Further differences between blogs and wikis are that wiki users usually search for information whereas content published in a blog is arranged chronologically arranged in time.
These are just some examples of contrasts between blogs and other forms of social technology. There are however many more!
Examples of wiki software, which is predominately open source, includes: TWiki.org and UseMod.
Reference
Herring, S.C., Scheidt, L.A., Wright, E. and Bonus, S. (2005) ‘Weblogs as a bridging genre’, Information Technology & People, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 142-171.
Below is a humerous video I came across of the John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon TV Presidential debate of 1960. The video has been altered in (it’s obviously fictitious) that the debate is about ‘blogs versus wikis’ (i.e. instead of debating the political issues of that year) with Kennedy supporting wikis and Nixon blogs 
Gavin Baxter