Chinesepod on Twitter?

I'm guessing that's a no. I just found the forum yesterday, btw. Didn't even know it was there. I'm guessing these more casual questions are more welcome there?

I dont even like the lingo. So, I will be twittering you? Is that the idea? Get ready for a real twirl.

I dont know what it is (twitter) but this is a perfect example of CPod's misguided approach. You start something, dont tell anyone, and expect a reaction? Other features go on and off and again without any notification.. Perhaps you need a banner page right next to our homepage that contains bulletted announcements and or crawlers to notify members of issues, changes, temporary break-downs etc. It could easily be edited by admin and read by members daily. RJ

I don't understand the point of Twitter anyway. I don't know how it's supposed to be the next big thing.

For me, it's just a way of keeping in contact. If I miss the notifications in email of new lessons, I know I'll get them in Twitter. :) And I've gotten to know other Mandarin speakers via Twitter that I wouldn't have found otherwise. One of them was able to point me to a resource for practicing Mandarin that I wasn't able to find. So it *has* been useful for me.

Is Twitter like 88groups? Whatever happened to that?

weixiao, according to wikipedia: Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application. For SMS, four gateway numbers are currently available: short codes for the USA, Canada, and India, as well as a UK number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email.but - how well it works within Cpod environment remains to be seen. 88 groups is still alive. We have examples of failure and "how not to" by admin and examples of "how to" by Yves, Bazza, and Marcelbdt. http://88groups.com/conversations

RJBerki, Whoa whoa whoa... let's not jump to conclusions. First of all, ChinesePod already has a lot of channels to interact with its users. We don't want to fracture them more; we want to make them better. That's why Twitter wasn't advertised to users. The ChinesePod Twitter account is a small experiment. And no, Twitter is nothing like 88Groups.

Yes, ChinesePod has a Twitter account now: http://twitter.com/chinesepod We're not sure yet exactly how we're going to use it. That depends largely on how you all, the poddies, react to it. We shall see!

Oh put it away, this is a spur of the moment trial, which will probably come to nothing from what I see of its usefulness compared to its time consuming nature. Besides, it was probably important to jump in there and register chinesepod before someone else did. Someone has already snitched my name! I registered with another name, it refused to take my picture, and although I was logged in I could see no way to post a message. That wasted 20 minutes. I've given up, too many other things to do and too many other sites wanting me to sign up and login. It gives me the pip. Whatever happend to the WWW being there for all? It's starting to feel like those silly loyalty cards that shops try to talk me into using. Keep it simple, I say, cut the glitz, cut the exponentially increasing number of needless "memberships", and up the practical doing on our own terms. Die, twitter, die. - Your friendly neighbourhood Luddite.

AuntieSue, I dont disagree and have already said twitter is not the issue. I only used this as an opportunity to make another point. Bad timing I guess. I dont care if they add twitter and if there is a use for it for anybody - great. I had never heard of twitter, let alone having it here at cpod. My point was that it would be nice to be kept informed. The comment: "We're not sure yet exactly how we're going to use it. That depends largely on how you all, the poddies, react to it." after it became obvious that no one knew we had it, just seemed like a ripe time to bring up the communication thing. So - your suggestion "put it away" is fine with me. Consider it closed then, but twitter was not the issue, not my issue anyway. Forget it. It was late. -RJ

John's a big fan of "feature creep" Bob... ;)

RJBerki, If virtually no ChinesePod users use Twitter, then it's clearly not a useful channel of communication for them. We won't push it on them. But it might be useful in other ways. That's what we're trying to find out.

Thanks John, if I get a chance, I will play with it. -RJ

I have met a lot of great people on Twitter, branched out to other people who speak Mandarin there and who live in China. It can be whatever you make of it. The program I use, by the way, is called "Twhirl" - I used it instead of the webpage. It has a good interface. It can, apparently, do more than one user account at a time if you need to monitor more than one. Anyhow, thanks for working on the Twitter side of CP. :) I appreciate it!

John, you are making my point. Communication channels are fractured and off somewhere else in a blog or some other device. I am not suggesting more fracture but instead of all that replace with one communication device by which you communicate with users that is actually a part of the main pages. The other point is that many things are not passed along, and just knowing, goes a long way. If there is a problem I think you would be amazed how cooperative and content members could be if you would just share these things. Those are the points I was using the small issue of the twitter launch to make. I am not the first to voice this concern.