To follow Climate Progress on Twitter, click here. Here’s why you should:
- It’s a modern, portable version of a news teletype.
- I will be in Copenhagen and tweeting.
- Your (online) neighbors are doing it!
Let me elaborate:
1. It’s like a modern news teletype. Some may think Twitter is only for dishing out 140 characters of trivial information to the kind of people who are interested in what Ashton Kutcher had for lunch. But in fact, for a blog, Twitter is more akin to an old fashioned “teleprinter (teletypewriter, Teletype or TTY),” which for much of the second half of the 20th century was a must-have in newsrooms and anywhere else that wanted to keep up with the latest breaking news.
As Climate Progress articles are posted, Twitter followers get the headline plus a TinyUrl to access the whole piece. Since the next several months will likely to see lots of breaking news on the climate bill, Copenhagen, and clean energy, you’ll get the news delivered immediately to you ahead of everyone else. And I promise to work on shorter headlines, too! Not only won’t this cost you a penny, it’s surely a lot better than this ever was:
2. I’ll tweet from Copenhagen. I will actually start doing “real” tweets at home and abroad. Yes, I’m aware that Twitter purists don’t consider the headines from blog posts to be genuine tweets. In particular, I’ll be in Copenhagen December 14 – 21 covering the big international climate conference. Thousands of delegates, climate experts, activists and journalists will be there, and I’ll be interviewing, reporting, blogging, and tweeting.
3. Your (online) neighbors are already following Climate Progress on Twitter! Since going on Twitter in April (see “How tweet it is“) I have amassed 2,066 followers (as of noon today), which I’m told is a lot. I’m also told that latest behavioral psychology research says the best way to persuade people to adopt a certain behavior is to make sure they know that their neighbors and people are doing it. Well, they are. All the time. Do they know something you don’t? Do they also have more compact fluorescent light bulbs and a bigger solar PV system and a smaller carbon footprint than you? Get with it, readers.
To follow Climate Progress on Twitter, click here. Do it for your kids.
