WHAT IS TWITTER?

Our theme for the Shambhala Congress 2009 is "Exploring Community." There is an open invitation for all Shambhalians to attend, and while many people have the resources and inspiration to travel to Halifax, many cannot. Twitter offers our global community a way to participate for free, from wherever they are. This sense of openness and inclusion is very much a part of the spirit of congress.

Twitter is a free online service that enables you to broadcast short messages to your friends or "followers." It also lets you specify which Twitter users you want to follow so you can read their messages in one place.

Twitter is designed to work on a mobile phone as well as on a computer. All Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters ~ and you can't say many words in 140 characters, but that's part of Twitter's charm. People are incredibly creative with this limitation, and it also maintains the "light touch" atmosphere that tweeters enjoy.

Within a tweet, you can send links to online articles and videos. You can also tweet links to photographs. It is possible to reply to someone's tweet, re-tweet something someone said if you like it and want your own followers to read it, and you can direct-message people and have a private conversation.

Discussion forums are created by using a hashtag, and we will be using #shambhalacongress. When someone clicks on the hashtag, they can see all the tweets that are so labeled.

Suggested Resources:

How Twitter Works: http://howtwitterworks.com/ It is highly recommend that you watch the now-famous video "Twitter in Plain English," which you'll find on the homepage.

Check out the Shambhala Times tweets, so you can see the kinds of things we chirp about:

www.twitter.com/shambhalatimes.org