The Twitter Chat

by Jeffrey M. Welch

Check out the Twiterversity guide for more.


What is a Twitter chat?

A Twitter chat is a live synchronous meeting utilizing Twitter as the meeting tool. They have become very popular and a a great way to learn new ideas, expand your network, and possibly communicate with interesting and sometimes influential people.

How does a Twitter chat work? 

In a Twitter chat, the convention is that a moderator will present a series of questions for you to respond to, these will be labelled #Q1, #Q2, etc. When you answer, you tag your response with #A1, #A2, etc.

Joining a chat is very simple. Go to Twitter at the correct time. In the search box type in the hashtag of the chat that you are interested in. You will see a few choices, the search mode defaults to “Top”, that is whatever is most popular. But that is not what you want to see. Instead, click “Live” and you will see tweets as they come in with that hashtag. When the questions appear, tweet back and include a hashtag and the answer number you are responding to in your response. Like this: “#interestingchat #A1 and your answer.”

As you are participating in the chat, click on the profiles of anyone who has interesting information to share and consider following them. There is a good chance that they will follow you back right away if you have interesting things to say. Answering questions and getting ideas is the reason you are in the chat, but a secondary benefit is that you will make new friends on Twitter and expand your network.

How to find a Twitter chat?

If you are an educator go here and use the calendar to find a topic and time for a chat that works for you: https://sites.google.com/site/twittereducationchats/education-chat-calendar. As you can see in the calendar, there are chats pretty much at any time you might want to join one. Look for one or two that look interesting and plan to take part. Times may vary, but typically, these chats are for about an hour.

For other topics outside of education here are a few places to look to find a chat that fits your interests:

Check out the Twiterversity guide for more.

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