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Anchor>> Joining us now... in a kilt... for Saint Patrick's Day...
from New Zealand via a Scottish and Irish background
Mike Johansson RIT social media Expert.
There's one question we're not going to ask and we hope you won't answer today
Reporter>> I don't even have to assume what it's going to be.
Anchor>> But you're here to talk about thingsyou can do on Twitter that you probably didn't even know
I know you can "tweet" the things that you write...
and then hit "Send" and... but there's more to it than that isn't there?
Mike>> Sure there's lots of other things people don't do very often like to use it as a news
feed and search and find interesting people and things... but
I've been sort of amazed in the last year the kind of other things you can do with Twitter
like... tweet a coffee to someone.
Anchor>> Wait a minute how do you do that?
Mike>> Well, you go to Starbucks,
you connect your Twitter account with Starbucks and you use
an "@" sign for tweet a coffee... just put the @ sign for the person
you want to sent it to. They send you a little confirm email back and
you get a little code and away you go! Anchor>> And you've paid for it obviously?
Okay. What else? Mike>> Book a hotel the Loews Hotel chain
16 to 19 hotels... you just tweet at them tell 'em
the the day and the property
and someone will start engaging with you on Twitter conversation and away you go!
Reporter>> That is very interesting! And I saw something
just to this morning actually... someone tweeted themselves and had something
critical to say
about themselves like: "please please don't be so pretentious on
Twitter"
It was "at" the same name... things I didn't know you could do!
Mike>> Sure sure and that's kinda the fun of it but you know Twitter really is one of
those things that I think
is probably the most under-appreciated social media platform
and - quick pitch: I'm teaching a class at the Rochester Brainery tomorrow night on
Twitter for beginner's if people are interested but...
A lot of things like: houses tweeting who knew? Anchor>> A house can have its own account and
you said the owner had set this up so that this
home communicated with him about what was going on at his house
Mike>> Sure there is a whole bunch of sensors set up in the house. They communicate with the
computer
and it sends out tweets about what's going on inside the house. He just follows his Twitter
feed and he knows people coming and going, the temperature,
...You can even find it when the plants need watering.
Reporter>> Interesting and
I did notice some people they use characters and you can make a tweet
exceptionally long even though it offers a 140 characters have seen people do
drawings with hash tags and what not as well.
Mike>> All kids of symbols. And they look great for the most part if you see them on Twitter.
But for people looking at them on their mobile phone or some other platform with things
get re-arranged they look like the dog's breakfast.
Anchor>> What is the hardest thing when you teach this class tomorrow night... first how do people
signed up for it?...
Mike>> Rochester Brainery - Google that. It's www.rocbrainery.com
It'll be right there. Anchor>> What do you find is the
biggest obstacle that people who are new to Twitter have to overcome?
I assume these are people who are not on yet who maybe
were just getting used to Facebook and now they have another social media
thing that they have to take on?
Mike>> You know, the amazing thing is, there are like two and a half billion Twitter accounts
have been created
but only about 500 to 600 million are active.
So people create them because they feel they have to an end to get intimidated and run away.
I think the biggest hurdle is:
it is just so different. It's very public, you only get a 140 characters
and everything you share is... anyone can find. It is searchable on Google.
And there are a whole little bunch of little shorthand kind of things that you
kind of have to know the language and that takes a little bit of learning.
Anchor>> I think that's the hard part.
Reporter>> And there's a lot of talk about Facebook's relevance to
this upcoming generation - do you think Twitter will continue to play a big role
Mike>> Well I think it will. In fact you know a lot of the teenagers are sort of
moving away from Facebook because grandma and
mom and dad are there. And they are moving to things like Twitter -short messaging.
Anchor>> Mike, thank you so much and thanks for wearing the kilt to help us
celebrate St. Patrick's Day.
Mike>> Sure... I'm gonna dance now?
Anchor>> Thank you for sitting so carefully. I thought you'd never ask.
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