The Internet is abuzz with a whole new vocabulary: memes and tags, posts and mashups, LOLcats, tweets and RSS. Friends, characters, flag, subscribe and interesting have a whole new meaning. This article helps you find your way in the new Web 2.0 world.

characters

letters, numbers, symbols, or spaces. When you send a txt message with a cellphone or a tweet through Twitter, you’ll be cut off after about 140 characters.

flag

Seen a photo on Flickr or a YouTube video that you find offensive? Flag it for the staff to review.

Flickr

An online service for storing and sharing photos. Add comments and tags. Subscribe to an RSS feed to automatically catch all photos from friends. Search or explore by many criteria.

friends

On social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn a friend is anyone you set up a connection with, whether you know them personally or not.

interesting

Flickr calculate an ‘interestingness’ score for each photo, based on tags, clicks, comments and so on. Explore the most interesting photos.

LOLcats

pictures of cats, with humorous captions, written to a certain style. LOL is short for ‘Lots of Laughs’ ‘Laugh out Loud’ (thanks Che for the reminder). Example: www.lolcats.com/view/55.

mashups

putting information together from more than one source. For example, combining crime statistics and Google maps CSI-style.

memes

An idea, saying or activity that takes hold and becomes popular. For example, LOLcats.

posts

Articles and other contributions to blogs, forums, etc.

RSS

Automatically delivers information from websites and other sources. For example, subscribe to the RSS feed for a particular person’s Flickr photos and any new photos appear automatically in your reader. Example National Library (NZ) photo feed.

subscribe

Usually free of charge. When you subscribe to something you add it to a list of items you will check regularly or receive automatically. For example, you might subscribe to the BBC Worldwide YouTube channel.

tags

Words that help describe something. A photo might be titled ‘Solace in the wind’, but have tags such as: wellington, waterfront, sculpture, statue, and so on.

tweets

Messages sent through the Twitter service.

Twitter

A service for broadcasting short text messages. People use it as a way to keep in touch and up-to-date with friends and colleagues, or news. Example: twitter.com/StuffNZ_World.

User generated

this means that you do the work. If you visit a website you may leave comments, upload images or movies, add information

that is all ‘user’ or ‘consumer’ generated.

Web 2.0

Websites and services that make it easy for people to connect with one another by rating items, marking favourites, sharing, commenting and so on.

YouTube

An online service for storing and sharing short videos. Add comments and tags. Subscribe to an RSS feed to automatically catch all new videos from a given topic. Search or explore by many criteria. Example, WildlifeDirect.

Written for and reproduced from CommunityNet Aotearoa Panui, March 2008.

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Bill Thompson of the BBC writes of Twitter:

Like many fast-growing services Twitter is far from perfect. The site sometimes creaks and falls over under the load, the interface can be confusing and sometime tweets don’t get through.

It is also a dangerous distraction from work, encouraging micro-conversations and followups and witty rejoinders when articles have to be edited, code checked and projects planned.

But as I sit here writing this I feel connected to a community of people, feel that we share a space that none of the social network sites can conjure up, a space that is both here and not here, somewhere between offline and online.

[Via : BBC NEWS | Technology | How Twitter makes it real.]

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The freewellington Twitterbot does something interesting — it notices tweets that begin with the letters fw and then repeats them.

This means, for example, that if I happen to know about or come across a free or low cost event in Wellington I can immediately let others know about it. Anyone ‘following’ the freewellington Twitterfeed will immediately receive the information.

Here are a couple of examples from the web page:

@chillu says free opshop concert in waitangi park at 7 today …

@br3nda says This week is FAIR TRADE FORTNIGHT.. just for 2 weeks, try for fair trade coffee, sugar, chocolate, cocoa, soap, software…

@johubris says Lyall Bay is very seaweedy today, go to a different beach 03:01 PM February 23, 2008.

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Twitter is one of those things that seems just inherently trivial and silly. It’s known as a micro-blogging tool — people write extremely brief ‘updates’ on what’s going on. Updates span a scale from ‘eating Weetbix for breakfast’ to ‘a huge earthquake just took down my house’.

It’s a bit like the early days of the telephone really: people didn’t know yet what it would be able to do, and were concerned about how it might be used:

… [in] the period between 1880 and 1920 … speculation about the telephone was that it would speed up life, eliminate regional accents, create a greater democracy and have people working out of their homes. … The people who developed the telephone had a clear sense of what the device would be used for. “It was emphasized as a practical device for practical use in business,” Fischer explained. “People, particularly women, were discouraged from using the telephone for ‘mere idle gossip.”

[Via: How the Telephone Brought Societal Change.]

Now we know that sometimes that ‘idle gossip’ is the lifeline that can help those who are housebound and isolated, and that the phone is an invaluable business tool.

Similarly with Twitter, which is another, increasingly popular, communications tool.

It can fulfil that role of simply connecting people, as Maria Langer explains:

Twitter is my virtual water cooler, where I keep track of the lives of other geeks like me. I might work alone in a home-based office, but my Twitter friends are always just a mouse click away with links, jokes, and comments to share.

And it can be much more meaningful, as Josh Catone describes in The Rise of Twitter as a Platform for Serious Discourse:

Twitter … is being used as a first alert mechanism for the dissemination of news and for immediate discussion surrounding that news. …

Why Twitter Works for News

It’s fast. Increasingly mainstream news reporters and bloggers are utilizing Twitter to put up news tid bits as they happen, and commentary as it pops into their heads. …

It’s two-way. Unlike TV or newspaper, Twitter allows for a conversation. …

It fills a void. As Ruffini points out, Twitter is built for the new news cycle. “Traditional news operated on a 24-hour cycle. Blogs shortened this to minutes and hours. Twitter shortens it further to seconds,” …

Twitter is being used more and more for mainstream news coverage. KPBS News San Diego uses Twitter to put out updates about stories, for example, and during the California wildfires last fall it was a must read. The potential for Twitter to be used for news dissemination is something the site’s founders realized early on during an earthquake.

[Via Read/WriteWeb: The Rise of Twitter as a Platform for Serious Discourse.]

It was very hard to abbreviate what Josh wrote — you really should read his whole article as there’s excellent content in there.

I’m not convinced that ‘news’ in itself is such an important thing, but I see two differences from traditional TV, radio or newspaper news headlines:

1. Anyone who can access the Internet can use Twitter. That means that real people who are experiencing events can give an immediate and direct account of what’s going on. We don’t need to rely on journalists deciding whether or not we’re important, mangling the names, the events, the activities, filtering our words. We the public have direct access to the rest of the world. We can also directly receive immediate feedback and commentary.
2. The ‘news’ is generally about someone else somewhere else. Twitter gives a real voice to real people, to our friends, family and acquaintance. It’s very specific.

Have you explored Twitter yet? If not, sign up and make a start with the ‘eating breakfast’ style of tweet. Get a feel for it. Then you can start to use it for ’serious’ purposes.

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Josh Catone at Read/WriteWeb writes about using Twitter to keep an eye on what’s happening in the current US Presidential race, and concludes that Twitter has a lot to offer in the realm of news. [Politweets is a site that tracks mentions of US politicians on Twitter.]

Politweets is actually useful. As my example from last night illustrates, the site clearly demonstrates Twitter’s ability to disseminate newsworthy information quickly and effectively — and in a conversation atmosphere.

Some sports leagues may be cracking down on live blogging, but as we have suggested, Twitter is going to become a more and more important way for people to report on news as they see it happen. Whether that is “Turn on the TV, something is happening!” or “The score is 87-84 with 23 seconds left,” Twitter is becoming a useful tool for citizen journalism.

[Via Read/WriteWeb: Politweets: Twittering Politics.]

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