I don't read everything in my Twitter timeline, but I do like scanning over it. Haven't found a client yet that gives you a good sense of what you have or have not yet scanned over. Google Reader would be perfect, except that Twitter dropped timelines via RSS.GTweet to the rescue!
You might have started noticing hashtags (like the ones seen on Twitter) and acronyms are frequently popping up in Facebook streams, news articles and social commentary - IMHO (in my humble opinion). While useful in getting directly to the point and adding a bit of taxonomy, hashtags and acronyms can be confusing to the uninitiated.
Departing from my usual posts on the latest tools, I'd like to instead run down some of the more common tags, terms and acronyms used on the web. After all, in order to use web tools effectively, you have to be able to speak to (and understand) your audience. This primer should help you out.
Click here to jump to acronyms for the web, here to decipher government abbreviations, and here to get the scoop on hashtag use.
General acronyms
Commonly spotted on Twitter
- RT - retweet, quoting someone else's tweet
- MT - modified tweet, paraphrasing someone else's tweet, usually so it can fit into 140 characters with your commentary
- HT - hat tip
- CC - think email lingo: carbon-copy
- IRL - in real life (meaning, not on the internets)
- OH - overheard
- +1 - "me, too" or "upvote"
Chatty
- TL;DR - too long didn't read
- FWIW - for what it's worth
- FTFY - fixed that for you
- ROFL - rolling on the floor laughing
- LMAO - laughing my a$$ off
- IMO- in my opinion
- IMHO - in my humble opinion
- IMAO - in my arrogant opinion
- JK - just kidding
- ITAP - I took a picture
- TIL - today I learned
- DAE - does anybody else?
- YSK - you should know
- AFAIK - as far as I know
- FTW - for the win
- IIRC - if I remember correctly
- OP - original poster
- ITT - in this thread
- BRB - be right back
- FYI - for your information
- IOU - I owe you
- THX - thanks
- NP - no problem
- WYSIWYG - what you see is what you get, helpful for understanding #opendata people talk about tools
- NSFW - not safe for work (ahem)
- TY - thank you
- YW - you're welcome
- FML - f**k my life...#fail
- BTW - by the way
Government specific acronyms
Check out this post by Digiphile and webacronyms.com if you're starving for more acronyms and abbrs.
- OGD - Open Government Directive
- EO - Executive order
- PAC - Political Action Committee
- GAO - General Accounting Office
- GSA - General Services Administration
- OMB - Office of Management and Budget
- CRS - Congressional Research Service
- FOIA - Freedom of Information Act
- POIA - Public Online Information Act
- CIO vs CTO - Chief Information Officer - Chief Technology Officer
- GIS - Geographic Information System
- OSS/FOSS - Open Source Software
- TOS - Terms of Service
Hashtags
Hashtags are used to categorize a topic, conversation or piece of content. How to tell the difference? Hashtags with general names (like "#opengov" or "#transparency") are used to link up your content with people interested in that subject or topic. Does your hashtag have a number or year associated with it (like "#tcamp11")? Or, does it abbreviate the name of an event (i.e. "PDF") or end in "chat" ("#foiachat")? If so, then that tag is being used to catalogue the conversations for a specific offline or online event, which you can join just by using the tag yourself.Not all hashtags will fit neatly into these divisions, but all hashtags can be followed using Twitter, Google Alerts or tools like Social Mention.
Government specific hashtags
For more government related hashtags, click here.
- #opengov - open government
- #tcot - top conservatives on Twitter
- #p2 - progressive politics
- #gov20 - government 2.0
- #egov - eGovernment
- #opendata - open data
- #localGov - local government
- #munigov - municipal government
- #transparency - transparency in government
- #sunlive - Sunlightlight Live
- #sunchat - Sunlight Twitter chat
- #tcamp11 - TransparencyCamp 2011
- #wegov - as in we are all a part of government
- #foiachat - Freedom of Information Act related chat
- #PDF - Personal Democracy Forum
- #ogw11 - Open Gov West
These terms, tags and acronyms should be enough to get your started on your way. Of course, this list is by no means comprehensive and you'll see these tags evolve over time. If you see any major omissions, please add them in the comments below.
When you click on the URL, you get taken to a blank white page, not a 404 error but an actual webpage that's all white. This means the NRSC bought the domain. I gotta give it to the Republicans. This is the sort of performance art stunt I would do myself. The problem is the tweet falsely attributes Obama's comment to his actual Twitter account via a fraudulent retweet, even going so far as to add his personal "BO" attribution.
Social is not another word for Public.
Spontaneously invite people. Share your unvarnished thoughts. Leave no trail.
My fantasy: A business where everyone blogs. Everyone thinks about what they are doing and writes about what they are doing. From the top to the bottom, the edges to the middle. Everyone awake and bouncing off each other intellectually as they get more and more effective at whatever they do.
THOMASdotgov
@THOMASdotgov Washington, DCUpdates from THOMAS.gov, the U.S. legislative information system, by @LawLibCongress
We noticed that Koch Industries’ official Twitter account (@Koch_Industries) spends a lot of time talking about politics, and not as much talking about, you know, their company.
So we plotted and categorized all of their tweets, by week, since they started the account in 2009. Tweets that are in blue are ones related to their business (broken out into business announcements, environmental record and safety record). Those in orange are related to political arguments (against climate change or for Libertarian principles) or self-defense. Green is tweets that discuss the company’s charitable work.
We’ve also added two guides to indicate key moments: the release of the New Yorker’s piece about the Koch brothers and Charles Koch’s recent essay in the Wall Street Journal.
What began as a typical corporate information-sharing system is now used more to promote a political worldview. But then, that’s not a huge surprise.
the real problem is this: any software that’s owned by one entity, corporate or not, is open to the possibility of being abused.
Five years ago this week, a small team of people started working on a prototype of the service that we now know as Twitter. On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey (@jack) sent the first Tweet.Today, on every measure of growth and engagement, Twitter is growing at a record pace. Here are some numbers:
#tweets
- 3 years, 2 months and 1 day. The time it took from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet.
- 1 week. The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets.
- 50 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago.
- 140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month.
- 177 million. Tweets sent on March 11, 2011.
- 456. Tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 (a record at that time).
- 6,939. Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day.
#accounts
- 572,000. Number of new accounts created on March 12, 2011.
- 460,000. Average number of new accounts per day over the last month.
- 182%. Increase in number of mobile users over the past year.
#employees
- 8. 29. 130. 350. 400. Number of Twitter employees in Jan 2008, Jan 2009, Jan 2010, Jan 2011 and today.
