Social networking: sorting the wheat…

I’ve read many colleagues’s concerns about who’s following whom on Twitter, and how seriously all this networking can be taken at the end of the day. In other words, does “n followers” necessarily mean better if higher? I’ve just learned about Twittersheep, and how by just entering my Twitter username I can find out what kind of followers I have:

TwitterSheep via kwout

Just took me a second, and has definitely helped me see what kind of “tweet”my followers would be interested in! And there’s no doubt of this: the better you know your audience, the more motivated you’ll feel to write for them, and the more effective your writing will become!

Here’s the article that taught me about this tool:

What Kind of People are Following You on Twitter

- written by Amit Agarwal on Feb 1, 2009

If you try Twittersheep too, let me know what you think of it!

And now that we’re at this, see what you can get by entering your twitter name at Twitter mosaic (also reviewed by Amit Agwaral, this time on Jan 29, 2009 - here):

Get your twitter mosaic here.

Unbelievable to me!

Gladys

My Tweetwheel (or “why social networking matters”)

This week at Learning with Computers, Ana Ma. Menezes is helping us all learn about “Microblogging with Twitter“. She’s a great facilitator, and despite my limited availabilities I’ve felt eager to give this issue some minutes… Somebody either in this community or at Webheads in Action had mentioned Tweetwheel, and I gave it a try. You can see the result above (click on the image to see the original page, and hover on any “friend” to see how many friends we have in common). I’m currently following 81 people, mostly EFL teachers, all of them usually twittering about EFL teaching and sharing useful resources. I guess I needn’t explain how this does away with the isolation of traditional f2f teaching in the classroom, and how it maximizes opportunities for professional development with like-minded colleagues!