Friendly Web Tools Blog

The world of technology is hard enough to keep up with - never mind all the new vocabulary that continually arises. That’s why we decided to launch an occasional new feature, the Friendly Web Tools Blog Word Watch. We’ll keep our ears open for new words and define them here so you can see what’s new on the scene - and more importantly - what it means.

Today: tweetup, n. A spontaneous meeting among connections who follow each other on the microblogging service Twitter. Friends usually meet, but more often strangers are participating in these ad hoc meetings too.

As in: “Impromptu Tweetup Tonight @ Apple Bar: 17 Waverly Place, NYC 6:30-8pm. Hope you can make it!” (source)

Wondering what Twitter is? Take a look at blog entries I’ve tagged with the word Twitter.

In the next few years, we’re going to be hearing even more about so-called microblogging. So it’s not a bad idea to start reading about it now. Besides, many organizations are using microblogging with products such as Twitter to great effect (follow me on Twitter, if you’re curious).

An article in BusinessWeek talks about how airlines are using Twitter to handle customer support. Look at this example from the article:

Christofer Hoff tweeted his displeasure with Southwest (LUV) on Apr. 28, when his flight was delayed and his luggage disappeared. The next day he received the following message from Southwest: “Sorry to hear about your flight—weather was terrible in the NE. Hope you give us a 2nd chance to prove that Southwest = Awesomeness.” In a blog post about the incident, Hoff wrote that it was “cool and frightening at the same time.”

Think about what parallels you might be able to draw between Southwest and your own organization. Can you use a microblogging site to …

• Notify your community about a successful fund-raising effort? (E.g., “Hurray! We just hit the $8000 mark! Help us get to $9000.”)
• Update volunteers on an upcoming opportunity? (E.g., “Friends of the Burlington Library: we still need four people for the book sale. Bring a friend on Saturday.”)
• Bring about social action in real time? (E.g., “Help us protest for fair wages. We’re meeting at 4th & Filmore. Bring your T-shirts and pickets.”)

Twitter or another microblogging site might not be for you and your organization. But it doesn’t hurt to educate yourself. Zappos (the company that sells shoes online) has a handy quick-start guide to Twitter, which is a pretty good intro for anyone.

How do you reach your constituency when they’re teenagers, don’t use e-mail, aren’t on Facebook and the cost of texting is prohibitively expensive? It’s a good question that came in to me today.

One option is to set up a Twitter account and start promoting it to your audience. This is a service that you can access from your PC and send short messages that your teens can subscribe to. Think mini-blog. Check out this handy list of questions from Twitter’s site.

Otherwise, most cell phone providers give e-mail addresses to their subscribers, with their cell phone number at the beginning and their provider name at the end (something like 1235551212@verizon.com). It’s generally free to receive e-mailed text messages for them and free for you to send them. Ask your teens who they have service with, and this will go a long way to connecting with them.