Twitter is an electronic platform where users share their thoughts, news, and ideas in under 280 characters of text. Users ‘follow’ each other to stay updated or to communicate with other individuals or groups.
Twitter began in 2006 by cofounders Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. The original idea was for a communications platform that allowed a group of friends to keep track of each other. This news and social networking service has since exploded in popularity. As of the third quarter of 2017, Twitter had more than 330 million monthly active users.
In the world of medicine, Twitter and other social media platforms have become mechanisms to share new ideas, educational topics, and research advances. Since Twitter is a universal resource that is available wherever there is internet access, information can be disseminated rapidly and efficiently. Twitter can be used in medicine in the following ways.
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Sharing information presented at conferences. This is particularly useful for those who want to learn but cannot attend live courses due to financial, political, or logistical reasons. This is also helpful to residents who may not be able to attend all educational conferences at their institutions due to work hour restrictions.
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Sharing information about the latest research findings. Information can be disseminated quickly to a larger audience as opposed to only those who subscribe to a specific journal.
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Creation of a community of healthcare providers who can share ideas and learn from each other.
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Disseminating information about jobs and other career opportunities.
For those who have not yet joined the Twitter universe, here are a few basic steps to get started.
Download the Twitter app to your smartphone. Follow the instructions to set up your user profile and your username. You will be referred to in the Twitter universe as @your username. You are now ready to send and receive tweets!
How to Tweet from Your Phone
Type your message (tweet) into the compose box that appears after you click the Tweet button in the top navigation bar. You can include up to four photos, a GIF, or a video in your tweet. Click the Tweet button to post the tweet. This tweet will go to all of your followers. You can also tweet to individuals by using their @username. Including @username in your tweet will allow only individuals that follow you AND the person you are @ing to see the tweet. ASE has the username @ASE360. So, if you include @ASE360 in your tweet, then your message will go to all individuals who follow you and also those who follow @ASE360.
Hashtag (#) is the symbol used to index key words or topics on Twitter. These allow people to follow topics they are interested in. Clicking or tapping on a hashtag word in any message will show you other tweets that are included in that hashtag.
Retweeting a tweet will spread the information from someone else’s tweet to all of your followers. You can add your own comments before retweeting, making it a Quote Tweet. See Figure 1 . You can also reply to a tweet or send a private message to a particular individual.
