I’m going to talk though the strange world of Twitter etiquette, recommend some great people to ‘follow’ and let you know about some great tools which allow you to incorporate Tweeting into your daily routine.

Plus if you are doing to the NCIDU09 in October you can really help me out if you are using Twitter.

I know a lot of you already use (and in some cases have developed a dependency on) Twitter, but I’ve also known a few people who register for an account, post one message and then never appear again. I think this is mostly down to having no clear idea how to use the site and also the ‘strange and mystical’ language everyone seems to be using on there.

What is Twitter anyway?

Twitter is micro blogging, basically it’s a way of sending out small chunks (140 characters) of information for anyone to see. Much like I do with the blog you’re reading this article on. The information can include links, images (via 3rd party image hosts) or just general things people want to say.

How can this be used for drugs work?

I use Twitter every day, both from a work account (@injectingadvice) and my personal account @mannaz and there seems to be an increasing number of people talking about harm reduction on there. Apart from the networking opportunities, which in my opinion make Twitter worth it on their own, there are a  other great uses. For example:

Trending: a great way to find what a lot of people think around the world in a quick snapshot is to do keyword searches. One worker I know from Twitter called @HepCoz uses it to find what people believe about HepC (apparently there is a current myth that it can be caught from eating oysters).

Trip reporting: one twitterer I know called @TallFences twitters live trip reports of his own substance use including details of body weight, dose, Shulgin scales etc, this week the drug experience in question was @TallFences first use of 2C-E. This is amazingly interesting stuff, but also useful for research and harm reduction (live advice, given in real time to someone).

There are quite a few harm reduction services and individuals already using Twitter to share information and harm reduction advice. A particularly good one I follow is Moshe Kron (@MeKron) who posts links to almost every relative piece of research there is.

Twitter the site

OK so you’re going to give Twitter a try, one of the first things you need to know is that no one who twitters uses twitter.com after the initial registration. I can’t imagine how much of a pain in the backside it would be to have to do everything I twitter via the main site.

Instead most people use special software that you can either run off your desktop, plug into your Facebook page, run from your phone or even (as I do) plug into your web browser. Lets look at a few of the better options:

Twitterfox: If you use Firefox rather than Internet Explorer to do your web browsing you can install this great plugin, every time someone on your list twitters you’ll get a subtle popup at the bottom of your screen. You can also use this to send twitters and automatically twitter interesting sites you find, it will even automatically shorten the links for you.

Twitter Mobile: Allowing you to tweet from many mobile phones.

Tweetdeck: Great for power users this desktop application is available for both Mac and PC users. It allows you to divide your list into groups, which as time goes on gets more and more handy. (Also has an iPhone version

Tweetie: This is the Twitter app I use the most on my iPhone, it does cost just over a pound but the extra functionality is well worth it. 

Twitter syntax

The way people communicate on Twitter is constantly evolving but the following tips should help.

@replies – if you want to send a message to someone start with their username and an @ symbol eg

@injectingadvice great new episode of Hooked, can you do a show on crack pipes?

#tags – people use # tagging to make subjects searchable, one of the most popular is #followfriday where every Friday people recommend the best twitterers to follow eg

#followfriday great drugs workers @kimikoe @jamiebillingham @inef @MeKron

RT’ing – If someone sends a great message that you think other people should see you can re-tweet it by starting the message with RT eg

RT@CovertUser I also wish I'd never shared my tourniquet as this resulted in my infection with Hepatitis C. #hepc

Direct message – as I’ve already said you can send someone a message by starting with an @username but this appears in your public timeline. If you want to send a direct message to just that person start with a D, although this only works to send messages directly to people who are also following you eg

D @Claudia_Bellocq thanks so much for the article on street work risk reduction, how do you fancy guesting on #Hooked?

The favour

Ohh yeah, I said I needed a favour didn’t I. As you’ll already know if you’re a regular visitor to the site, both Allison (my co-host on the Hooked podcasts) and myself are presenting a talk on using social media at this years NCIDU09. We would like as many people going to the conference as possible to use #ncidu as a tag for their tweets while there, and for you to ‘live blog’ the whole event.

I’m going to be setting up a page on this site that will collect all the #ncidu messages  and I’ll live blog from there myself. But one of the main hopes is that we can demonstrate during the talk that twittering is a great way of sharing information in real time. After all, as any twitterer will tell you, it beats traditional media for speed of communication, sometime by hours (It took over an hour for BBC news to catch up with Twitter on Michael Jacksons death).

Other great Twitter resources

Guardian introduction to using twitter ‘Making the most of Twitter’
The big juicy twitter guide.
Injecting Advice.coms own Twitter links page is a great place to find drug workers and activists to follow.