Do journalists speak Twitter?

However much like claptrap Twitterspeak may sound, for journalists tweeting their every move, blog or article - or anyone else who is considered a tweeter - it may prove useful to be kept abreast on lingo updates. After all, when the Associated Press makes room for Twitter-related words in its 2009 edition of the AP Stylebook, Twitter's role in a journalist's life has been reconfirmed.

Still not convinced? Online pioneer and blog writer Dave Winer considers his work unpublished until promoted on Twitter, asserting that Tweeting has become an essential step in his routine. "I've been posting links to new blog posts on Twitter since I started using in two years ago. It's just a natural step in the publishing process."

Tweeter journos so attached to their Twitter accounts have thus become the targets of an array of Twitter guidebooks designed to help them maximize Twitter's infinite potential. Mashable.com, a website dedicated to advising social media-users, has released a print version of what Poynter considers to be "one of the best all-around guides." 

Meanwhile, Doug Greathouse of Arcimedia has published a "Top Secret Twitter Traffic Guide" aimed at helping people learn the ropes of "what Twitter is all about." He is distributing the first 500 copies of the book for free in exchange for enthusiastic testimonials. Those on the receiving end, the "beta group of STP's", or "Super Twitter Profiteers", should count their blessings, believes Greathouse, who is convinced that his traffic guide "is worth hundreds of dollars."

Really? Hundreds of dollars? Maybe building up a large fan base on Twitter is a soothing stroke to one's Tweego (the over-inflated ego that one gets when one has thousands of Twitter followers), but does anyone actually speak tweet? Which journalists are tweaking their vocabulary to speak tweet comme les oiseux? 

What members of the Twedia (media on Twitter) use Twitter jargon as much as they use Twitter to promote their brand? Perhaps less than one would imagine, since Twitter is used by journalists and Twedia professionals to promote a brand, rather than one's mastery of Tweet-speak.  

Katie Couric, host of CBS Evening News, may not be employing twerminology to her broadcasts, but she sure is listening to her followers. In Couric's case, connecting with her audience in order to satifisy their needs and desires seems to be an obvious motive for her tweets. In a recent interview with former English Prime Minister Tony Blair, her questions were partially dictated by her followers. 

Joel Stein, Time Magazine columnist, is more of a twomourist, contributing knee-slapping blurbs about his haps and mishaps with the world (ex., "To all of you ladies who send me flirty @ replies, just want to let you know that I am a very happily married man. That said, please don't stop" and "Sorry defensive waiter, I asked what is in the soup, not what isn't in it") than he is a journalistic self-promoter on Twitter. For him, Twitter is a tool used to entertain his 331,795 followers rather than spoon-feeding them Stein-signed columns and articles.  

Of his 322 (and counting) tweets, not a single tweet has been used to promote his work which includes columns for the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly in addition to Time Magazine. Instead, his tinyURLs  (shortened versions of long URLs used to aid Twitters budget their 140-character tweets) direct his followers to articles that are of interest to him. "If you told me as a child that we would one day need tinyurls, I would have never believed you," he says of tinyURLs in a tweet.

Stein is hardly an author Twitterspeak. He has even gone as far as to poke fun at Twitterspeakers who use language found only in tweets and not in normal conversion: "I can't believe that even on Twitter @Alyssa_Milano has a catchphrase. 'Until we tweet again...'?"

A more austere Nancy Grace would probably rather be caught dead using Twitter lingo, but there is room in her heart for Twitter-love (or twuv!): "This Twitter thing is pretty cool! Hello to all my viewers!!!" The CNN crime reporter is admittedly only an occasionitter with only 11 tweets to her household name, but when she does tweet she likes to keep it real. Example: "@ShawnLee34 Hello there! I appreciate your concern, but I am not a WANNABE like some of those other twitter accounts. Thanks!" (Notice the lack of twerminology - deliberate or not - of twacker or hightwacking.) 

Perhaps the queen of mean is less of a fan of Twitter since her audience are not Twittervores, (Twitter users whose preffered mode of communication and news gathering is Twitter) unlike her CNN colleage, Anderson Cooper whose 5000+ impersonal tweets link followers to his Anderson Cooper 360° newsroom blog. 

Understanding Twitter language is important for journalists, even if they don't want to actually use it. Luckily, however, most of the words in a Twitter dictionary or 'Twictionary' require little imagination. Instead, start saving now if you didn't get in line for Greathouse's free Twitter traffic guide books. 

 
Source: Poynter Institute

P.T. (Post tweet): If you made it this far into this twerminology breakdown, then kudos to you. I think I'm going to check into tweehab now.