Twitter

Twitter may appear to be one of many online attention drains, but tweeting often proves surprisingly practical. Washington University Libraries staff members are offering two free workshops in July aimed to help interested members of the WUSTL community explore how and why this social media tool can be useful.

University Libraries and the Alumni Association are hosting a “WUSTL Tweets, Tweetup” at 3 p.m. Friday, April 27, in Olin Library’s Ginkgo Reading Room (Level 1). A tweetup is an in-person networking event for Twitter users to meet their friends/followers in real life.

The City of New York recently subpoenaed a Twitter account as part of an ongoing Occupy Wall Street criminal case. The Occupy protester named in the case is challenging the subpoena. Privacy law expert Neil Richards, JD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, says that it’s not surprising that law enforcement groups are interested in accessing the volume of records relating to our speech that social media platforms generate. “By and large, this data should remain private, and online companies should keep the data confidential and not share it any more broadly than we as users and speakers want it to be shared,” Richards says.

Twitter might appear to be one of many online attention drains, but tweeting often can prove practical. Washington University Libraries staff members are offering a series of free workshops aimed to help interested members of the WUSTL community explore how they can productively utilize this social media tool. All sessions are free to WUSTL students, faculty and staff.

Getting a Twitter account going for a department or organization is relatively simple, but making the most of the social media platform can be a challenge. Washington University librarians will explore how to use Twitter as a powerful publicity tool in a workshop at Olin Library from 3-4:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 21. Registration is free and is open to WUSTL students, faculty and staff as well as people from other institutions and nonprofit organizations.

Commercials during the Super Bowl may be some of the most watched ads on broadcast T.V., but Olin marketing professors say social media has changed the game. Advertisers need to engage the audience before, during and after the game with strategies that include everything from smartphones to Twitter.