Chat with Me

On Twitter today are two chats I usually participate in. Beginning at noon Pacific time (you right coasters--count forward) the Write Chat takes place under the hashtag #writechat . It lasts about three hours.

Then at six p.m. (PST) comes the ever-rowdy, more marketing-oriented #blogchat for an hour or more, depending on how long participants want to continue.

The best way I've found to participate is through Tweet Chat. Sign in with your Twitter info, then enter the hashtag of the chat you want into the space at the top of the page and click on "Go". Zip! You're in the chatroom, ready to begin.

Introduce yourself and say you're new to the chat. We'll be kind! To catch someone's attention, begin your message like this: @GLHancock. Plunge into a convo or initiate one of your own and maybe someone will respond. Messages are limited to about 120 characters because TweetChat automatically appends the hashtag of that chat room. Look around the boxes, and you'll see helpful icons like character count, ways to control the refresh speed, reply and retweet symbols, and even a way to eliminate annoying bots and spammers from view ("block").

If you want to try to participate in a chat via your Twitter interface or mobile device, search for the one you want by hashtag. You'll need to remember to put that hashtag in each post or your message won't go to the chat, just out in your regular Twitter stream. All your remarks in a chat go into your main stream, too. Take care, it's easy to forget that in the heat of debates. Also, you may need to keep refreshing the view to see new tweets. See you there?

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