ReBar Camp Charlotte gets a plug

Attention Realtors:  In your July/August issue of Insight Magazine by the NC Association of Realtors Barbara West writes a piece following up on REBar Camp Charlotte from the spring.  The article is on page 17.  Chad Huck, one of the co-organizers, brought this to my attention today.  Lori Bee and Debe Maxwell were quoted in the article.  I think Barbara West did a very good job covering this event! 

For those that may not know, a ReBar Camp is a conference that follows a very loose organizational structure and leaves the day’s events and learning up to the participants that attend the event.  For the first event of this kind in the area I think it went pretty well.  There will be improvements next year and I hope you will be in attendance next spring.

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Twitter Demistified

I had a lot of questions in my office after my last FaceBook/Twitter post.  Today I taught a fun Twitter class and below are a few notes I thought of relating to the subject on my way to the office today. 

Enjoy the video.

[flv:/video/twitter1.flv 480 360]

I use http://tweetgrid.com and Tweet Deck to monitor Twitter.  One is totally web based and the other is a software download that is more expandable.

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What’s up with all the @, # and RT in FaceBook status updates?

If you have friends like mine on facebook.com then every once in a while you will see a status update start off something like “RT This link bit.ly/uHOJb rocks @toddlongre #ReBCClt“.

So what does all of that mean and why are they talking in some weird code language?  Well you have just dipped your toe into twitter. If you are reading this from my blog you will see a widget titled “What am I doing”.  That is my latest twitter post, which is most likely also my last facebook status update.  I have my Twitter post (or tweet) automatically posted to facebook for me.  

The cliff note version of twitter is it is a micro blogging/social networking site that allows for 140 character post.  The RT at the beginnings of the post means the person posting the message got it from one of their friends and they are now Re Tweeting (posting) it for all of their own friends.  The @ symbol before a twitter id, such as toddlongre, is a shout out of sorts to that individual.  In this case it would be giving credit to the friend that sent them the post originally.  In a post such as “hanging out with @TheChadHuck and @kaotichic66 at the lake” would just be id-ing the people the poster is hanging out with by referencing their twitter id instead of saying their name.  The reason for doing this goes a little past twitter 101 but basically TheChadHuck may want be monitoring all of this twitter stream that specifically is directed to him.  A filter of sorts.  The #ReBCClt at the end gives this tweet an anchor to a certain event or tag.  (more on this later)

Oh and that bit.ly/uHOJb.  that is a shortened longer url so it would fit inside the 140 character limit.  Check out www.bit.ly.  You can shorten any url and personalize the shortened url as well with a free account.

Time Magazine wrote a terrific article on Twitter and how it is finding a unique niche.  One thing that I found especially interesting is that Twitter didn’t create these RT and @ symbol mechanizius.  They have been created and extended by the users.  the # symbol has no meaning at all until everyone at a conference who is tweeting about that conference uses #rebcclt in every post they write that day.  Then you have twitter users who can’t attend but want to know what is happening at the conference so they search by #rebcclt and like magic everything is sorted by time stamp related to the conference.

Setup you free twitter account at www.twitter.com then follow me at toddlongre.  you can then send me a direct message by putting a “d” in front of your message and only I will see it.  You can write: d toddlongre I have setup my twitter account, now what do I do?

I’ll help you from there.  I’ll warn you.  Twitter took me a little time to understand and for a while it was like looking at a garbage can expecting something miraculous to happen.  If you are easily discourage then twitter probably isn’t for you but at least now you know what all those # @ RT are doing in your geeky friends facebook post.

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