Come and Join My World Languages Twibe!

After trying out Twitter Groups, my preference has definitely gone to Twibes.
Twibes are Twitter groups set up in order to help people with common interests finding each other on Twitter.

“Why do we need Twitter groups when we have hashtags?”
Hashtags are words prefixed with a “#” added to tweets and automatically hyper linked to a search. For example: #WorldLanguages . Hashtags are useful but they do not provide lists of users with similar interests..Hashtags are also owned by the community and the meaning of a tag may change over time or one particular Hastag may have multiple competing meanings.
Twibe members may be connected by geographical location, career, religion, hobby or any other commonality. There are several thousand different Twibes in dozens of categories, with some Twibes having thousands of members, while others only have a handful.

A Twibe has a founder who chooses keywords for the Twibe, and sets its mission statement via the Twibe description. Joining a group is a positive step to identify oneself as a member of a specific community. Hashtags can be used by anyone at anytime, in contrast, a Twibe has a visible list of people.

Twibes allow for multiple keywords, which allows for richer meaning and clearer topic definition. Hashtags are easy, but they can have duplicate meanings e.g. MFL is only related to languages in a UK context and some languages searches also include computer languages!

With Twibes, there is no need to remember a specific hashtag or leave room for it in your Tweet. However, tagging clearly has many benefits. Hashtags really are the best way to tie together content from multiple Web sites like flickr, delicious, and twitter, with a unique term. These identifiers work well for conferences or spontaneous events.

Twibes are arranged into categories, and you are allowed to join 10 twibes and create 3. To See what twibes are available in each category…

Go to www.twibes.com
Scroll down the list until you see a category heading that interests you
Under each category heading is a list of three Twibes in that category
To see the rest of the Twibes in any specific category, click on the "more" link in the lower right hand corner of the category box
To learn more about a Twibe, or to see a list of Twibe members, simply click on the Twibe name and you will be directed to the Twibe's home page

In the meantime, if you teach world languages, do consider joining my WorldLanguages twibe. To share ideas and resources about language-learning make sure your tweet includes #WorldLanguages (or #wl) or #MFL for UK-related content (with or without hashtag sign).

http://www.twibes.com/group/WorldLanguages

The Twibe page is also useful to find like-minded language colleagues to follow on Twitter-Just go on the group member’s avatar/ picture to view their Twitter profile or to follow them.
See you soon on our WorldLanguages Twibe Page!