Twitter for Scientists

science Tuesday, July 7, 2009. Post by jobrodie

A recent discussion among science writers led to debate over whether as communicators they should all be instant experts in Twitter and related social media tools. Here, Jo Brodie (@jobrodie) a communications expert at Diabetes UK discusses the basics of twittering.

How to follow a topic or conversation on Twitter without having a Twitter account:

1. The easiest method is to go to http://search.twitter.com and type in a relevant keyword – eg #wcsj – press enter and see the results. Alternatively, use the integrated search box on the Twitter homepage for the same result.

That will look like this – http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23wcsj

As new tweets are posted with your keyword you will need to press the refresh button (ie reload the page) to see them too.

2. The second easiest method is to go to Monitter or Twitterfall (I prefer this one) and type in a word there and watch the tweets unfurl in real time – ie they auto refresh. I’ve found Monitter to slow down my laptop quite a bit, Twitterfall less so.

3. If the topic is very popular (eg anything to do with Michael Jackson, Britney Spears and the like) it will be a ‘trending topic’ – ie in the top ten of popular tags, then you can watch it unfold in real time over at What The Hashtag and there’s also the opportunity to ‘harvest’ a transcript of all the tweets to read when convenient.

Image via Wikipedia

* That looks like this http://wthashtag.com/Wcsj
* The “View transcript” link is below the bar chart which is showing the number of tweets over a number of days.

If it’s not trending and not appearing at wthashtag you can add it yourself – but you will need to sign up for an account. The people behind wthashtag helpfully created the #wcsj page for me because I didn’t have an account at the time. I’d only learned about it the week before at Sci Comm Conference – there seems to be a very short lag time these days between hearing about a tool and then using it!

3a. What’s a hashtag?

It’s very similar to tagging or keywording (eg as used in Flickr to help people find things when searching). The # symbol adds a ‘flag’ to a word increasing its signal against the noise of every other tweeted word. It also makes it appear as an active link in the search results page at http://search.twitter.com. You can search for a word without putting a hash in front of it though, it’s not essential for most things.

4. Receive tweets by email

Tweetlater (you need to register) is a free service which will email you the results of a Twitter search for a particular topic – another way of catching up with a lot of tweets on a topic. [Topify.com lets you run several functions DM's, following, blocking for your Twitter account via email, db]

The information in the rest of the post assumes a Twitter account – visit Twitter and sign up.

The middling to advanced tips
1. Ten Brutal Twitter tips from David Bradley – useful overview

2. Tweeting in 140 characters, shortening links – Each twitter post of 140 characters is a ‘tweet’ and the only way to include most web links is to shorten them otherwise they won’t fit. Twitter does this automatically but to get the most info in your tweet, as you’re writing it, it’s best to pre-shorten your URL so you can see how many spare characters will remain.

URL shortening services include Tinyurl, is.gd or bit.ly – bit.ly lets you track the number of times your link is clicked on, as does tr.im, which may be useful information. [You might also investigate WordTwit for self-hosted WordPress users which makes your own site a URL shortener and so retains your branding, db]

3. The @ symbol, “@replies”

In front of anyone’s name (with no space) does two things (i) turns the name into an active link that can be clicked on taking you to their Twitter profile and (ii) sends a copy of the tweet to them – although they go straight to the person they are also public and others can find them, so do not use @reply for private messages, see DM below (though it’s probably best not to use Twitter for private messages).

You can read messages sent to you by clicking on the @jobrodie (your name here) link in the right hand side of the main page, once you have an account.

4. Retweeting someone else’s post (RT)

RT (retweet) in front of a post means that you are reposting someone else’s Tweet.

Here’s one I tweeted earlier…

“RT @JRBtrip RT @TechCrunch Tweetraising: the potential for charities on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/ok6a5t”

This means that I’m retweeting @JRBtrip’s post, he himself was retweeting @Techcrunch. My retweeting of this, using their @names means that both people will receive a copy of my message – ie they’ll know that I’ve retweeted them.

There needs to be a space before the @ otherwise the name won’t resolve to an active link. [Retweeting is a very important part of twitter etiquette as well as impacting on personal twitter grade and rank, db]

5. Hat tip

Another way to acknowledge someone is to use h/t or ht to acknowledge that they were the originator of an idea, for example – here’s me acknowledging that @SciCommConf and @marilyneb told me about the wthashtag (what the hashtag) website. It’s not done that often to be honest, but if you see the phrase that’s what it means.

“Not enough characters left in last tweet to h/t @SciCommConf & @marilyneb for highlighting @wthashtag – #wcsj transcript

6. Direct Messages (DM or d)

Typing d jobrodie sends a private message to me but it will only work if I am following you (if I’m not following you it would have to be @jobrodie). You can also send direct messages through the Direct Messages link on Twitter.

7. Following posts / conversations in real time with a Twitter account

Tweetdeck is excellent for this, you can download it from – it presents you with basic columns (all the tweets of everyone you’re following, a column of tweets sent to you, a column of private messages plus any columns you care to add – eg a search for #wcsj).

You need to grant Tweetdeck access to your Twitter account for it to work – I’ve not had any problems with this particular service but have only used it on iPhone. [There are lots of external applications that require you to login with your Twitter ID, if you're unsure about these, check them out on twitter search before signing up, just in case there are security issues; TweetDeck is "safe", db]

Some additional suggestions

1. Using Twitter on a mobile phone

Twitter’s easy to use on a computer/laptop but there are mobile phone applications such as Twitterfon, Tweetie as well as Tweetdeck (for iPhone) that mean you can read or post tweets (might be a link to a blog post for example) while on the move. Many people at #wcsj were using phones to ‘live blog’ the conference. [Ironically, Twitter was meant to be an SMS service in the first place, db]

2. A new account needs a bit of time to get going

It takes time to get the hang of Twitter but a little bit longer to build up a network. Lots of people sign up and then can’t see the point of it. It’s a bit like moving to a new neighborhood and getting to know the locals – it’s something you cultivate.

It really helps if you fill in the bio section, add a link to your website (or blog) and a photo. Then people know who you are. [Or, at least who you'd like them to think you are, db]

3. Following people and being followed

Anyone can follow anyone else, unless they’ve restricted their “Twitter stream” by locking it – in which case you need to request permission to follow them. People are less likely to follow you if there’s no information in your bio. In my case I’m likely to block you from following me if I can’t see who you are. It’s just difficult to engage with people if they’re anonymous – and Twitter is meant to be a tool for social networking ;) [I very rarely follow anyone who has restricted access, it's pointless, take a look at my twitter follow decision flow chart, db]

You can find people to follow by (a) searching for their name or knowing their Twitter account URL and clicking on the ‘Follow’ button, (b) by searching for keywords and following the people writing the most interesting posts about them, (c) if you’ve found someone to follow see who else they are following and who else is following them – some of those people might have similar interests to you.

4. Attention conference organizers

Please choose a hashtag that’s simple and brief to type when tweeting from a mobile phone. #wcsj is pretty much perfect – short, letters only (numbers are on another screen on iPhones) and gives you more characters to type a message in – also it’s very natural (‘organic’!) and reflects what people were using already in referring to the conference. To be honest #scc2009 wouldn’t have been my first choice for the sci com conference but it doesn’t matter much when you’re using a laptop of course.

Many conferences use Twitter to create a bit of a buzz around the event and draw people in, some conferences might want to set ground rules about what sessions can be covered – I expect people may well ignore this but sometimes it mightn’t be appropriate to live blog things, I suppose.

5. Blog owners … and possibly newspaper (online versions) people (?)

If you want to make it easy for people to share a post and you want to maintain some control over the link, pre-shorten the URL for them (create the post, shorten the URL, then amend the page to add in the new URL – I don’t know a simpler way) or use a ‘Tweet this’ button. This makes it easy for people to share info on your website (promote your work) without having to shorten the URL themselves…

Using a bit.ly [and tr.im, db] link here lets you collect some referral information about where clicks are coming from – and at this point we are at the limits of my URL tracking knowledge.

In David’s post linked above one of the first things you see on the page is the ‘Tweet this’ button – if you read the comments you will see I was asking about this sort of thing when the text was originally posted.

Many sites do this very well with a panel of social media sharing buttons including Facebook, Digg etc. etc.

6. If you wanted to refer to the URL of a particular Tweet…

…look at the bit just below the Tweet – the ‘time when it was posted’, in this case “half a minute ago” gives the URL for that particular tweet.

” TEDchris Mass-collaboration music vid. Beautiful way to nurture your fanbase: http://bit.ly/8yJiG (via@ndjbaker) ”
half a minute ago from web

7. Twitter’s just a series of RSS feeds

Some content you create yourself by typing it, some can be pushed from another source – eg I have an automated feed set up to collect any newly registered clinical trials about diabetes, which is published automatically whenever the ClinicalTrials.gov database is updated http://twitter.com/diabetestrials

• Previously on SciScoop: « Saving Lives in a Flu Pandemic

• Next:A Magic Definition of Sea Water »