I suggested a project using Twitter HERE. Let’s create a “stack” of tweets during the day. Concentrate your effort on a day and single theme instead of various scatterings over days when they might not be noticed.
Here is the first collective tweet for TUESDAY, 8 January 2013. Copy. Paste. Tweet after 00:00 GMT. Repost. Retweet.
@Pontifex Holy Father, thank you for your Epiphany sermon!
Father, can you put the tweets in Latin? [Yes, I can. No, I won’t.]
There was some discussion last week of using an agreed-upon hashtag. I have very little experience with twitter, but I believe the idea was to increase the visibility of the project… Any thoughts on this?
How about #Epiphany?
I still can’t figure out Twitter. Grumble grumble grumble.
But I did tweet.
I love this idea. Love.
@majuscule, just keep Tweeting. If you don’t figure it out, you’ll convince yourself you have after enough time. Works for me.
I have been using PontifexTuesday as the hashtag…being the twitter professional that I am.
Just tweeted. I added the hashtags “WeLoveBXVI” and “PontifexTuesday” at the end.
This project *made* me read the Pope’s Epiphany homily, by the way.
Since two of you are already using the #PontifexTuesday hashtag, I will use it now as well. The more of us who tweet the same hashtag, the higher the visability for Fr. Z.’s project.
I too have tweeted using the #PontifexTuesday…guess that brings it up to 4! Viva il Papa!
Tweeted the past two weeks but did not think of using the # !!! Will remember for next week’s tweet.
Will use #PontifexTuesday next week. This is the only time I actually tweet, since I mostly use Twitter as a news-gathering mechanism when I don’t have easy internet connections.
ajf1984,
I think it will be great if we can all start using the #PontifexTuesday hashtag when we participate in Fr. Z’s Pontifex project. For those who are not yet familiar with Twitter, when you tweet a message at someone (using the @ symbol, as in @Pontifex), you are directing your tweet to them, but only the people who follow you and the entity after the @ sign receive the tweet. So, in the case of Fr. Z’s project, when we copy, paste, and tweet “@Pontifex”, followed by Fr. Z’s. message, only the person/people handling the Holy Father’s twitter account and those of us who follow Fr. Z. on twitter will see it.
On the other hand, if we do both, meaning use the “@Pontifex” AND we all use the same hashtag (#PontifexTuesday), it is the fact that multiple users are all tweeting out under the same hashtag that has the effect of creating that STACK of messages that Fr. Z. is calling for. On twitter, the hashtag symbol is a shortcut for the twitter search engine. If you log into your twitter account right now and enter #PontifexTuesday in the search engine box, it will bring up all the tweets that have gone out today under that hastag. So, right now, there is a “stack” of 4 messages collected together for Fr. Z.’s project. But if you all want to build up that number of tweets in the stack, which has the effect of creating a “trend” and advances the project, then we all have to use the same hashtag. When you hear one of the news anchors on Fox News announce, “trending right now on twitter…” that’s what they mean. The use of the hashtag is how people keep track of the biggest topics, the most popular and most tweeted topics, that are trending on twitter. So if the goal is to get #PontifexTuesday to become a big trend on twitter, then we all have to use the same hashtag.
Here’s a link to an article that explains the use of the @ symbol on twitter:
http://www.cloudave.com/1769/6-tips-for-using-the-sign-in-twitter/
Herre’s a link to a lesson on the hashtag from the folks at twitter:
https://support.twitter.com/entries/49309-what-are-hashtags-symbols#
I have just tweeted it with #PontifexTuesday.
Done.
..I think.
Trouble is, I’ve used Twitter so little, I can’t say with any certainty that I actually sent a message to anyone. I merely opened my account, found the little button that said “compose a tweet” or something like that, and pasted in Fr Z’s message.
I hope that’s enough.
jflare,
Once you clicked inside the “compose” box, it should have opened up to become a slightly larger “compose” box. Underneath the larger/expanded “compose” box where you pasted Fr. Z’s message, you should have seen the number 140. Next to that 140 is a box that says “tweet”. After you pasted Fr. Z’s message, you should have clicked on that “tweet” button. That’s the twitter equivalent of “send”.
If you want to double-check yourself, you just log back into your twitter account and go to your home page if you aren’t directed there automatically. In the top-left corner of your home page, you should see your name and profile picture (if you uploaded a profile pic). Right below your name/profile pic, but above the compose box, you should see 3 other boxes labeled “tweets”, “following”, and “follows”. Click on that “tweets” box and it will bring up all of the tweets that you have sent, assuming there aren’t too many of them. I think it only brings up the most recent tweets for high-frequency tweeters. If you see your Pontifex tweet come up there, then you did just fine!
Done. What a wonderful project Fr. Z.