Today's word is twitterati, thank you Chris Rusbridge. The word appears in a post on 11 March by Chris to the JISC repositories list. He is the Director, Digital Curation Centre, at the University of Edinburgh.
The meaning of the word is very clear - twitterati are people who know about and presumably use the Twitter software and the term is pretty well established and widely used. In fact there is a whole world of language which derives from the twittering habits and preferences of many people - Twitter, says Twitter, is "a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"
In the course of checking out twitterati, I also came across TweetMinster, "a place where real life and politics tweet." It seems to foster twittering amongst the parliamentary twitterati at Westminster. Do we want our Australian members of Parliament doing this kind of thing?
Twitter is not a term confined to people with curious tastes in communication. Go to twitternet or for that matter email the twittermaster@twitter.net and you will encounter something completely different.
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4 comments:
A twitter-related term that I'm rather partial to is "tweeps" (presumably a contraction of "twitter peeps") for one's social circle on Twitter...
Are you on Twitter, then, Derek?
No, I'm not. Would it be a good idea to join? How much of my time will it take?
How much time do you have?
Bit like Facebook that one. I never go near FB unless I am emailing ppl and too lazy to look up their addresses. Some people spend all their time on FB.
Twitter I have on all day every day and it is my auxilliary brain and major form of contact with my extended network.
The key to twitter is to get some friends by stealing them from someone else like me, CW or Andrew...and then become part of the conversation. Or to be a spectator, try just following the ABC news or Stephen Fry.
I choose to have a private account for twitter, as I don't want google indexing my blather.
Connie Crosby, a Web2.0 savvy Canadian librarian, posts as her last tweet each day "Goodnight my Shining Twitterati" - which is kind of sweet :)
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