Practical presentation of Twitter in the Government: concept, type, uses, elements, social network and examples.

1. Twitter in the Government
Directorate General of Citizen Attention
Generalitat of Catalonia
Barcelona, 30th March 2010
This work is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. It allows the reproduction, distribution, public communication and transformation to generate a
derivative work, without any restriction providing that the author is always cited (Generalitat de Catalunya. Departament de la Presidència) and this licence does not
contradict any specific licence that an image within this report might have and the rights of the image prevail. The complete licence can be consulted at
1 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/legalcode.ca.

2. What is Twitter?
Twitter is a social networking platform for publishing short
text messages (up to 140 characters) and communicating
with users via web browsers and mobile telephones.
The communication is open on the Internet and there are
social networks arising from the users that follow it.
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3. Twitter logo map 09 © Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten . CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Twitter Galaxy
Twitter is the web platform, the
infrastructure.
The users use multiple
applications to manage the
editing and publication of
messages (like Hootsuite,
TweetDeck, Twitterrific, Echofon,
Mixero, Twitux and GTwitter), for
transmitting images (Tweetphoto,
Twitpic, etc.), for mobiles (Uber
Twitter, Open Break, Seesmic,
etc.), for metrics (Twitalyzer, etc.)
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4. Types
These are the basic Twitter mailboxes (profiles):
Twitter logo © Matt Hamm. CC BY-NC 2.0
- Personal
- Corporate, those used by
organisations. In this
presentation we will focus
on this type of mailbox,
corporate mailboxes.
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5. Uses
For organisations, Twitter is a tool
suitable for:
- communicating various types
of information (incidents, warnings,
Twitter icon for a fluid app © Fotopedia. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
emergencies, meeting agendas,
invitations, human resource
recruitment, etc.)
- informing of new services, articles,
publications, posts, press releases, etc.
- for broadcasting events
- for chatting and collaborating,
namely, for creating a social network
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6. Structure of a tweet
Text + shortened link + #hashtag
Twitter Accounts of the Catalan Parliament http://ow.ly/1nfaU #ogov
Music in Creative Commons http://ow.ly/1qF9h #cc
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7. Elements: tweet text
Twitter bird logo icon illustration © Matt Hamm. CC BY-NC 2.0
The information must be short,
accurate and concise.
It must be properly composed
according to the linguistic criteria
and graphical conventions
(typographical syntax etc.)
currently in force in the
organisation.
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8. Elements: link
Twitter logo © svartling . CC BY-NC-NC-SA 2.0
The links bring added value to
the tweet. They must be selected
and the trustworthiness of the
source checked (examine the
author and their history, check the authority of websites,
tending towards content from organisations and not so
much towards individuals with very personal opinions,
etc.).
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9. Elements: hashtag
The hashtag denotes the tweet’s topic and it must be short. It is
preferable to use those that already exist on Twitter
(check which are in use via Twitter’s search engine
http://search.twitter.com, for example, ‘administració’).
The hashtags are used to recover
information quickly. We can search
and filter content using the hashtags,
collaborate and share information.
They are also an indicator of the
most important topics currently on
Twitter.
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10. Retweets RT
Retweets are tweets from other people or organisations that are
published again. They encourage conversation. We can retweet in two
ways. The first is to use the initials RT and the tweets have a maximum
length of 125-130 characters (according to how many characters in the
profile name).
1. RT + @nameofretweetedprofile + text + shortened link + #hashtag
RT @Odilas The Global Information Technology Report 2009-2010
http://ow.ly/1r6CK #tech
2. Retweeting directly from Twitter and therefore this icon appears
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11. Network: followings and followers
The tweetsphere (network of people on Twitter) is made up of
the users that we follow (followings) and those who follow
them (followers). As a general rule, we also call those who
follow our profile ‘followers’.
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12. Managing the followings using lists
To manage this communication better, we need specific lists of
people or organisations that we should follow more closely because
their activity matches our profile well.
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13. Measuring the impact
www.twitalyzer.com
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14. Example of Twitter in the Government
http://twitter.com/emergenciescat
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15. Thank you!
Twitter in the Government
Directorate General of Citizen Attention
Generalitat de Catalunya
Barcelona, 30th March 2010
This work is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. It allows the reproduction, distribution, public communication and transformation to generate a
derivative work, without any restriction providing that the author is always cited (Generalitat de Catalunya. Departament de la Presidència) and this licence does not
contradict any specific licence that an image within this report might have and the rights of the image prevail. The complete licence can be consulted at
15 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/legalcode.ca.