@cooljustice @connpost @ctnewsjunkie @valleyindy @wherewelive @colinmcenroe @senchrisdodd @stsengarylebeau @ct94dem @hynes2000 @joecascio @jcnork @gideonstrumpet @lastchancect @clairesnewhaven

This week, I’m going to do something a little different. Andy Thibault, who writes the Cool Justice Blog has recently joined Twitter, as have a few other friends from here in Connecticut, so I’m writing this blog post to welcome Andy and the others and to help give them a feel for what Twitter is really all about.

The boring geeky way would be to talk about who interesting people to follow are, which is partly what I’m doing here and to talk about how to get your own message out on Twitter, which I’ll do a little bit of here and a little bit of later on.

I use a site called TwitterFeed. Twitter feed takes the RSS feed of my blog and posts the title, the first several words, and a link to my blog on my Twitter Stream. It is fairly easy to set up, and if you have a blog, like Andy does, you should really set up Twitter Feed to tweet your blog posts.

In addition, I use the Facebook application for Twitter. Once you set up your profile, you can get it to take your tweets, or messages on Twitter and add them to your Facebook status. So, when my blog post goes live, it will show up on Twitter, and some people may come to the blog that way. It will then show up on Facebook, and may follow the link there and add comments.

But enough being a boring geek for a little bit. I believe that a better way to understand twitter is to think of it as a conversation at a party; some of it inane, some of it profound, all of it providing tidbits of information. You can listen to whichever groups of people you want. Once you’ve listened for a while and you get a sense of the conversations, you join in.

I tried to think of what party might best describe the folks I listen to on Twitter from Connecticut and it struck me that the best example might be at some important opening of a Connecticut college radio station.

I remember when I was much younger, hanging out at the college radio station. In one corner was the teletype. It could type at a whopping 11 characters a second, so mostly we just saw headlines coming in. Some of us less social and more geeky folks would gather around the teletype and see what was coming in and carry on stilted conversations about what we were reading.

So, the first group of people on Twitter I will highlight are the local news outlets. @connpost, @rep_am, @bristolpress, @hartfordcourant lead the pack. Oh, here’s a good point to make a jab at the Hartford Courant and explain another part of Twitter etiquette. When someone says something interesting, you ReTweet it. The proper way to retweet something is start your message with RT meaning ReTweet. Then, attribute it by putting the tweeters id.

As an example, if I wanted to ReTweet a headline from the Bristol press, I might say something like:

RT @BristolPress BRISTOLPRESS.COM GOP candidate: can't afford the house: BRISTOL — The city should abandon ..http://bit.ly/uJpEj. Even in Twitter, it is important to give proper attribution.

Besides the traditional big name news outlets, the weekly alternatives are there, @hrtfordadvocate, @nwhavenadvocate, and the @fairfieldweekly. There is a college newspaper there, @therecorder. The new news sites, like the Valley Independent @valleyindy and CTNews Junkie @ctnewsjunkie are there, and there is public radio, @wherewelive.

Connecticut Public Radio’s newest celebrity, @colinmcenroe is passed out in the corner somewhere, probably because of too much vodka, nutella and opium. He hasn’t posted since January but hopefully Chion Wolf can get him back on the straight and narrow.

@ctnewsjunkie doesn’t post that often on Twitter, probably because she is busy running between various political figures on Twitter and busy with her own news site. @senchrisdodd, @stsengarylebeau and @ct94dem are busy holding on their discussions. @stsengarylebeau is new to twitter and has approached it like a typical politician busy talking but not really interacting with anyone on Twitter yet. Our elder statesman, @senchrisdodd has learned that he needs to more in touch with the voters in Connecticut, and while he doesn’t interact with others via twitter either, it does feel a little bit more connected. State Representative Gary Holder-Winfield, @ct94dem, does the best job with interacting with constituents and others by replying to other people’s tweets and retweeting ones that he finds particularly interesting.

As a side note, replying to someone on Twitter is just like retweeting, except that you don’t start off with an RT. So, if I wanted to reply to something Gary said, I might type

@ct94dem Great Job!

Besides the politicians, there are others that are at the party to get their message out. For example, @lastchancect posts messages about pets that will be put to sleep at various shelters if they are not adopted soon. I like to retweet @lastchancect because what they are doing is so important. It also helps that they thank people who retweet them, which is a great way of finding other interesting people as well as being found yourself. The same applies to @clairesnewhaven. I must admit that I’m not a regular there, but my wife the foodie, @khynes2000 assures that I’ve enjoyed food from their store and it is great.

Yet a key part of any party are just the regular people that are there. A few of my good Connecticut friends that I try to engage in conversation on twitter as often as possible are @sheilamc7, @joecascio, and @jcnork. @gideonstrumpet and @paulbogush are two of the most important Connecticut people to listen to on Twitter. @gideonstrumpet is a public defender and offers great insights on the legal system. @paulbogush is a teacher and provides equally great insights on the educational system.

Two more shoutouts before I move to the next part. @shelisrael and @missrogue. They have written the two best books I’ve found yet which go into more details about Twitter and social media, The Whuffie Factor and Twitterville.

In Twitterville, @shelisrael talks about people live tweeting events. Go to an event, and tweet interesting parts. The way to make all your tweets mix together nicely with everyone else at the event is to use an agreed upon hashtag. A hashtag is simply a word or acronym preceded by a hashmark. Various tools combine all of these posts together, either by a simple search or with a more sophisticated tool. Tweeting events, including a hash tag, and seeing who else is tweeting the same event can build great new friendships on Twitter.

With that, let me do a final shoutout to @shhhe. She is a key voice behind #peoplebrowsr which is one of many tools that I find particularly useful in sorting and organizing different streams of information coming at me from Twitter.

To close, let me mention Follow Friday. Follow Friday is a popular means of telling others about who you follow, or at least whom you think others should follow. It also provides a great way to start getting involved with Twitter. Follow people that your friends recommend on Follow Friday, or simply check out whom they are following and see if any of them are your friends. Slowly, you’ll find a good people to follow and interact with, and if you have interesting things to say, they’ll follow you back.

So, that’s my follow Friday for this week. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope all my U.S. friends have a great Labor Day Weekend.