Reflection on the use of twitter for academic purposes

Twitter is an online social network service which also called social network, microblog, and social utility that enable users to send and read short 140- character messages called "tweets". It can be accessed through website interface, SMS, and mobile device apps. The users of twitter must be cautious that as default it is not private as it warns that “What you say on Twitter may be viewed all around the world instantly.” By going to the settings the user can change the privacy and make it public which permit only the followers to read them and retweet.

Twitter has a broad range of usage such as communicating in a social online space, sending and receiving short public massages on different topics, conversation with others and so on depending on the users for which aim they use it. But one of the most important usage of twitter is its academic usage like its use in universities, research, projects, and teaching.

As today many researcher, teachers, and other academic bodies using twitter, it is an easy and useful way for academic students to follow them and gain knowledge and information from what they tweet. The academic bodies usually using it alongside with blogs which means that they simply tweet one or two sentences about the things which are going on in a seminar, conference, research trips, projects and put links to podcasts, webcasts and further details where to downloads papers, other materials and so on. The teachers using twitter in teaching to give advice on each week tasks, readings and helping the students with problems.

The students can use it in groups on particular subjects with hashtag # and the other group member can follow the hashtag and become aware of what is going on. In addition, the students who are aiming to learn something without being present in the class from far ways can follow particular bodies or groups in twitter and referring to the specific hashtags to see what is happening.

If someone wants to tweet anything on a special and specific subjects or events can use hashtag #. Also if the user wants to mention particular bodies can use @ username. Furthermore, it is possible for user to retweet a tweet and also can reply to it using @ username to mention someone.