Ollie Otters explains Twitter

What Twitter is

Twitter is one of the social networking, or social media, tools; others you may know include Facebook and Myspace. Twitter allows you to share information with the world in up to 140 characters at a time (called a "tweet"). It goes to one's "followers", or it can be viewed through a website, or it can be accessed by a plain old link. Twitter can also be received on computers or mobile phones, or indeed written to from PCs, PDAs or computers.

Overview of how Twitter works

It allows people or organisations to post messages/updates no longer than 140 characters to the internet.

This is called "tweeting" and a message is called a "tweet".

So tweeting is a bit like texting on a mobile phone except that it goes to the internet for all to see.

Tweets are posted to the author's "timeline" (list of tweets) on Twitter on the internet.

If you have a Twitter account, then as well as seeing your own tweets, you can select other people to follow, and your timeline will include your tweets and those of anyone you are following on Twitter. Conversely, anyone who has chosen to follow you will see your tweets in their timeline.

Timelines are arranged with the most recent tweets first.

Twitter is free and you can sign up for an account at twitter.com

But you don't have to have an account to see tweets, though you don't get much of the functionality:

View Ollie Otters Tweets without an account

go to http://twitter.com/ollieotters/

How Ollie Otters is using Twitter

Ollie Otters Swim School is using Twitter as another medium for getting latest news to you. To access this, do one or more of the following:-

• Follow Ollie Otters from your Twitter account (search for "OllieOtters" in the "Find People" Twitter option)
• Go to the Latest News Page on the Ollie Otters website; this now has a Twitter-generated table displaying the latest Tweets, alongside the conventional Ollie Otters latest news - see www.ollieotters.co.uk/latest.htm. Sometimes the Tweet table takes a while to load up, so please be patient.
• View the Ollie Otters Tweets on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ollieotters/

Some examples of who is using Twitter:

• Organisations, eg RNLI (posting details of recent rescues), NASA, UK MoD, US Air Force, large companies
• Barack Obama
• magazines
• TV and Radio (e.g. Radio 4 posts the current programme time and name 24/7
• Many comedians, notably Stephen Fry, Eddie Izzard (who puts them up live in his shows), Alan Davies, Dara O'Briain, etc.
• The Met Office for its severe weather warnings
• Travel info, eg, National Rail Enquiries with details of trains not running, some airports and airlines, and even one provided by the BBC on M3 traffic updates
• A lady who is 104 - she has thousands of followers
• Radio DJ's on national and local radio
• Individuals telling the world what they are up to
• Local news highlights
• Local info e.g. Surrey Libraries events