Sunday, March 6, 2011

Following DuxburyCARES on Twitter -- and Getting Updates Directly to Your Text-enabled Phone

One of the ways DuxburyCARES has been reaching out to the community -- and highlighting the kind of technology and communication today’s students will need to be fluent with going forward -- is by using Twitter to broadcast short pieces of news and information about the project and the voting process in real-time.

Twitter is a hybrid of social networking and “microblogging” to provide a platform that is used for everything from simple personal connections to targeted product marketing to customer support initiatives to news dissemination and, yes,  teaching. It’s even had a role in major international events, such as the very recent “gentle” revolution in Egypt.

In the final days before Town Meeting, DuxburyCARES plans to use Twitter to update followers about last minute developments in the process, reiterate key points, and to remind voters to attend Town Meeting. You don’t need to be near a computer to follow these tweets; Twitter will allow you to configure a “follow” to deliver tweets to your text-enabled phone.

If you’ve ever wondered about Twitter, now might be just the time to check it out.

So…how do you go about setting this up?

1. You need to have a Twitter account. It’s free, and you can choose to hide or “protect” your tweets, or you can choose to let your tweets be public (of you choose to tweet at all!). Go to http://www.twitter.com/, click Sign Up, and follow the on-screen instructions.

2. Make sure your Twitter account is setup for mobile connectivity. Under your user name in the upper right corner, click Settings, then click Mobile. Enter your mobile phone number and click Start to verify.

3. Follow DuxburyCARES. Go to http://www.twitter.com/DuxburyCARES and click Follow.

4. From your mobile phone text “follow DuxburyCARES” to 40404. You will receive some confirmation texts and from this point forward you’ll receive all DuxburyCARES tweets on your phone as text messages.

You’re all set!

Let us know if you have any additional questions.

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