Monday Ebooks: Twitter Edition
Welcome to Monday Ebooks, in which the Editrix indulges her most harmless delight in electronic books and all things related to them.
As a Twitterer of some months, we have been amused and bemused by the sudden infusion of Janeiteville into Twitter. (Well, why not; everyone else is getting on board now.) We have acquired some followers that we suspect might be some kind of cover for a commercial enterprise of some sort, but we were amused to see that Mr. Darcy Twitters, as does Miss Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Collins, of all people.
But this is Monday Ebooks, not Monday Fictional Characters Who Twitter, so we would like to point out @NetherfieldPark, to whom we were directed by Alert Janeite Trai. “The Narrator” is Tweeting Pride and Prejudice, 140 characters at a time (paraphrased, not verbatim, you understand). Laurie Viera Rigler has decided to do the same with Persuasion.
Cub Reporter JulieB also has set up a Twitter account @JaneAustenQOTD that will just be a daily Jane Austen quote.
This is, of course, all just more proof that She’s Everywhere. And if you would like to try bite-sized bits of Jane Austen’s books in electronic format, may we recommend Daily Lit? They will e-mail you any of Jane Austen’s novels, one installment per day (or more often if you prefer). And DailyLit Twitters as well. Doesn’t everyone?
P.S. If you have any questions about Twitter (yes, even “what the heck is it?” or “what’s the point?”) we are delighted to entertain them in the comments.
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I’ve picked out tomorrow’s quote just for you, Mags. Hope you enjoy it.
To coin a phrase: What the heck is it? (Actually, I’m kind of getting the drift, but what use is it?)
Thanks for your help.
Cathy Allen
P.S. Can you tell I’m not a kid anymore?
What the heck is it?
Twitter is microblogging. You have 140 characters (including spaces, punctuation, etc.) to answer the question “What are you doing right now?”
“Followers” sign up to follow you, and all the “tweets,” as the individual posts are called, from all the users you follow are aggregated on a single page.
What use is it?
Originally it was just meant as a way for friends to easily send messages to one another and keep in touch. This led to a lot of tweets such as, “Having lunch, yum, pb&j!” which, while fascinating from an anthropological point of view, is not much use.
However, like all great ideas, Twitter has become something more. The best use for it, in our opinion, is to direct your followers to something cool, or to “tweet” interesting events. For instance, last October I tweeted the JASNA AGM (which I think some people liked). I would just post an update about what was going on. Right after I had been able to hold and look at a piece of one of Jane Austen’s letters, with her signature, I tweeted it all “OMG OMG” and there was some response to it!
Another event that was tweeted was the crash of the USAir flight into the Hudson. One of the people on a ferry boat that helped rescue passengers took photos with his iPhone and tweeted them, which were “retweeted” over and over and eventually picked up by the traditional media. Another really interesting (to me) use was an American reporter who was jailed in Egypt for reporting on an anti-government protest. He managed to get out a tweet that he had been arrested, and his friends went to work with the U.S. government to get him (and eventually his translator) out of jail.
Recently, my sister called me to tell me that the Phillies’ long-time broadcaster, Harry Kalas, had passed away suddenly. As a lifelong Phillies fan, I was naturally shocked and grieved. My first thought was: get on Twitter. I follow a lot of Phillies bloggers and fans and it was therapeutic to read what others wrote as well as be directed to links.
I also follow some celebrities–several of the cast members from The Office tweet. Rainn Wilson is a scream–he’s really funny and bizarre. I love his tweets.
Twitter is fun and can be addicting.
Thanks, Mags; that was most informative and interesting. MUCH better than when I tried to get an Internet answer. I can see the possibilities, now, thanks to you.
You’re OK, no matter what anyone says (a little humor, there…very little…LOL).
Cathy Allen
My first plug as an Alert Janeite! Yay!
I was aware you had a Twitter, Mags (you were one of the first people I followed, haha) but I didn’t realize until NetherfieldPark started following me how large a Janeite contingent there is on Twitter! It is most interesting.
Twitter has reached a tipping point, just like facebook did awhile back. I’ve been on both for awhile and never used them because I didn’t know anyone who was on them. Then about 6 months ago I started getting action on facebook, and now I’m getting action on twitter.
And by “action” I mean “activity on my account by my friends,” not any other kind of action that other people might use social networking sites for.
Oh, I would totally follow Mr Collins:
“OMG, Lady DeB has a new barouche!!!”
“RT DeBurghLady, that was such a witty tweet!”
I’m “following” you now! Yay! My id is Kerry_McC – please don’t block me!
There’s some interesting information here about Twitter Quitters:
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/twitter-quitters-post-roadblock-to-long-term-growth/
It seems Twitter’s retention rate is low, only 40%–in other words, 60% of the people who sign on in a month do not return the following month. Facebook, it seems, has a 70% retention rate.
For my part, I personally drew the line at Facebook (which I came to reluctantly mainly as way to keep in touch with the younger members of the family).
I can see that tweeting has its uses, but it’s just wayyyyyy too much information overload for me!