Twit-ta-wooo Tweet to you!
Posted 06 Aug 2009 - 3 Gratefully received comments
Welcome to the first guest article on the Ken Reynolds Design Blog, this came about from a conversation between Ken and myself (Andy Kleeman) – which we thought could turn into an interesting guest post… hopefully you’ll agree!
I’ve been aware of (and a user of) twitter for some time now and have a pretty empty looking home page on my twitter account. As much as I’ve tried, I’ve never really got into twitter and at times have struggled to see the point… especially when text updates stopped in the UK.
For those of you who were never aware of the SMS updates… until around a year ago twitter would text you the updates of those you follow free of charge! Obviously you had to be a bit pickier on those you received updates from in order to stop your phone becoming like a vibrator with no off switch.
In fact twitter has always been very focused around mobile updates – which I guess is in part, where the 140 character limit comes from.
It’s that focus on mobile phones that became a big problem solver for me last week!
Last Wednesday I met with two friends who needed a website sharpish for a “charity kayaking-gig-busking tour” – www.honkykayaktour.co.uk
In short it is their intention to kayak from Goring in Oxfordshire to Godalming in Surrey over the course of a week with their musical instruments aboard, stopping along the way to busk in the name of Charity on behalf of the Phillis Tuckwell Hosipce & camping under the stars.
Being the disorganised chaps most of my friends tend to be we had one week and two days until they we’re setting off, their meeting with the Charity was the next morning and to date they had no gigs lined up!
How would anyone know where they were going to be without things planned in advance?
How will they raise any money busking if no one can find them?
That’s when it hit me – twitter!
We can set up a twitter account that the guys can update by texting, which in turn also updates their website – brilliant!
Twitter is an excellent solution in this case! – by pulling the tweets into the honky kayak tour website content is kept fresh and it gives visitors a reason to repeat visit in the same way a blog does. The tweets are easy to update from a mobile phone simply by texting twitter & in this scenario I see no feasible alternative for Dan and Dave to update their website on the move. Thanks to twitter we’ve very easily incorporated dynamic content into an otherwise static page!
Twitter can also be massively helpful for businesses. Why? well when somethings wrong scandal/rumour/outright mistreatment – twitter has become the young internet’s voice, the word can be spread (it could be argued) quicker than in any other medium – a message can spread to followers of followers of followers in next to no time so it would also be a sensible and quick way to address the situation for the business in question.
In the past few months two such situations arose; when some Dominos pizza employees posted a damaging video on youtube and when all of Amazons homosexual listings completely disappeared from their searches (source .net magazine). Dominos were quick to respond using their twitter account, Amazon chose not too.
Again this week speculation quickly spun through twitter that this had been top gears last season based on Jeremy Clarkson’s end of show comment.
“Twitter was soon awash with fans wondering whether Clarkson was referring to the Aston Martin cars or to the series.” (the guardian)
Thursday – created logo.
Friday – designed & built the website, set up a twitter account / just giving page.
Job done! – now I can sit back and watch the tweets come in!
Please feel free to go and check out the honky kayak tour, follow honkykayak on twitter where they’ll be posting their whereabouts once their trip begins this Friday. Any donations (which can be made via justgiving) you would like to make to their very worthy cause would be greatly appreciated!
Keep your eyes peeled over the next few weeks as I will be producing another guest article, this time a quick tutorial on including twitter on your website!
Andy Kleeman is a graphic designer and web developer (aka the boy who cried fox) living in Camberley Surrey, you can see his website here.“Thanks to Ken for including this post!”
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Who's Ken?
I'm a freelance graphic designer living and working in Suffolk.
I've been using Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign & Quark Xpress since 1999 but I've been using pens, pencils, paper and most importantly my imagination for a lot longer. I'm always looking for new clients to work with and interesting projects to work on.
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Great article Andy, thanks for contributing.
It’s a good cause and a really original way to raise funds. I wish them the best of luck.
[Reply]
Andy, like you I tend to join these social networking sites and then fail to see the merit in using them. But I’m told that they are the way forward and indications are that in the near future, unless you have a Facebook login for example, you will unable to use a range of other online services (you willl have to have a FB login to register and buy online…).
Twitter is something else entirely, and while I am not a fan, you can use it for things like this (http://connectedcommunities.rsablogs.org.uk/2009/05/20/blogging-and-tweets-from-digital-inclusion-seminar/ , which is great!
The thing I’m interested in though is how these sites develop as inclusively as possible… we still have a large number of people in the UK with no access to the internet and poor I.T. literacy. Just something to ponder!
[Reply]
Thanks Becca! – consider me pondering!
[Reply]