What is Twitter?
Twitter is free website and service that sends small, 140-character text messages to and from cellphones and websites. Twitter is about exchanging a small amount of information and it is revolutionizing that way we look at the internet, cellphones, and social networking.
Some people use Twitter as a micro-blog, telling people where they are at, what they are eating, and how they are feeling. Some use it to get weather updates, stock tips, or breaking news from CNN.
This video plainly explains what Twitter is about:
Twitter is considered a social networking web service. You friend or “follow” selected Twitter accounts. When you log into Twitter, you see a feed of the latest “tweets” from all the accounts that you follow. You can then reply to accounts to establish a conversation with others.
How Sojourn is using Twitter?
Sojourn has two main Twitter accounts: @sojournchurch and @davidthew.
@sojournchurch – This Twitter account alerts followers of new blog posts, new audio and video upload, and important announcements. Followers can choose to receive updates on their cellphones or simply through a web browser on their computer, PDA, or mobile device.
The @sojournchurch account is automatically updated by Twitterfeed.com once new content is posted to the http://sojournhuntsville.org front page RSS feed. Once the Twitter account was established, it sits back and coasts. It's turnkey networking with next to no maintenance costs. I manually log into the Twitter website 3 or 4 times a month to “follow” the Twitter users that have chosen to follow @sojournchurch.
@davidthew – Likewise, this account is the personal account of Sojourn’s founding pastor David Thew. David has no interaction with this service and his updates are posted automatically without him ever being involved in Twitter. David’s Facebook.com status updates are automatically pushed to his @davidthew Twitter account via Twitterfeed. Also, any blog post he makes on the Sojourn Huntsville website gets added to his Twitter account because I’m using Twitterfeed to monitor his blog’s RSS feed.
Should someone at Sojourn use Twitter?
I don’t recommend Twitter for just anyone. I do recommend Twitter for persons that what to take command of Twitter and receive specific information on their phone. If you aren’t doing that, then Twitter becomes a chat with other people. Chat may be good for some people. But I suspect that for most, chat adds more noise to the signal.
If there are any Sojourner’s that are into online publishing and want to further establish their brand, then Twitter is the hottest night club in town.
And it’s a neat way to post notes about where you are visiting and how you are feeling. But so it email and a blog. Then again, Twitter is very easy to use, which is probably why it has so many people posting so many updates per day.
(TIP: You can tell Twitter to only send you updates to your phone during certain times of the day. This is great for avoiding late night/early morning text messages.)
All that said, there are some geeks at Sojourn.
How could Sojourn step up our Twitter game?
We could be sending out SMS reminders to the congregation about upcoming Sojourn Events. This would be a optional service to all members. The fact is, the capability exists for this to already be done by the individual. We just don’t have any mechanism setup at Sojourn for this to happen right now. If we really wanted to do this, we would probably write a module for our website and leave Twitter out of the loop.
We could allow people to send SMS messages to a Twitter account and have those messages appear on a projector during the meeting times. This could make for a neat creative collaboration worship experience.
What’s the net result?
Right now we’ve got about 11 Twitter users in the Sojourn community (@baju, @jeffbarnett, @ericgmorgan, @ericatkins, @joshmann79, @davidthew, @wendyhmorgan, @heb1024, @individjoality, @CynicallyNaive, and @wclaunchjr). Right now @sojournchuch has 17 followers while @davidthew has 31 followers. We do get a few clicks into the Sojourn website from people noticing a new blog post has been published. Definitely this is a baby step into a new social networking world. Perhaps it’s the start of a bigger online presence that will help build the community here at Sojourn or expose our community to those looking to join up.
The Twitter accounts are going to keep on self feeding and self healing. Now, it's time to play the waiting game and see where this takes us.
