MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5, at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. It's Tech Tuesday. It's a rambling chaotic conversation about local neighborhood culture taking place 24 hours a day, 140 characters at a time. Welcome to the real time frenetic world of Twitter. Only 13 percent of online adults use the Twitter microblogging platform.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIAnd if you're part of the other 87 percent, you may think it's just a tool for the self-absorbed and self-obsessed, or as one local columnist has called them, myopic little twits. But Twitter is fast becoming a powerful tool for understanding neighborhoods and culture. It's created new ways to demand accountability and to shame government agencies and new ways to debate issues like crime and transportation.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIIt's also changing the way we talk about local politics, bringing terms like REDC, fully loaded and Suleimania into our political vocabulary. So can Twitter and social media change the way you think about your hometown and how you fit in? That's our Tech Tuesday conversation. You can join it, of course, by calling 800-433-8850. Has Twitter changed the way you understand your neighborhood or the local political scene?

MR. KOJO NNAMDIThat's 800-433-8850. Joining us in studio is Martin Austermuhle. He is senior editor at dcist.com. He tweets @dcist_martin. Martin Austermuhle, good to see you again.

MR. MARTIN AUSTERMUHLEGood to see you. Thanks for having me.

NNAMDIAlso with us in studio is Sylvia Brown. She is a community activist and advisory neighborhood commissioner in the Deanwood neighborhood of Northeast Washington. She tweets @anc7c04. Sylvia Brown, thank you for joining us.

MS. SYLVIA BROWNAfternoon.

NNAMDIMandy Jenkins is social news editor at The Huffington Post, where she covers Washington from a national perspective. She previously covered this region from a local and regional perspective at tbd.com. She tweets @mjenkins. Mandy Jenkins, thank you for joining us.

MS. MANDY JENKINSThanks for having me.

NNAMDIAshley Parker is a reporter for The New York Times. She recently started a Twitter column called "Trending N.Y.C." on The New York Times website. She tweets @ashleyrparker. Ashley Parker, good to have you aboard.

MS. ASHLEY PARKERThanks for having me.

NNAMDIAccording to the most recent poll from Pew, only 13 percent of adults, as we said, use the Internet -- use Twitter on the Internet, and to some extent, it's just a social media platform with a small but enthusiastic user base. Sylvia, the last local election in D.C. was back in April, a special election for an at-large seat, but you'd be forgiven for thinking the election was in May or June because, well, the campaign posters tend to stay up well past Election Day.

NNAMDIIt's an age-old grievance. We hear in Northern Virginia and Maryland about it, but it's a grievance that Twitter is beginning to help solve. Can you, please, explain?

BROWNRight, right. I think that that issue really connected a number of people across the wards and across the city because, as you indicated, posters were up since the last mayoral election of 2006. And I think that people and I included, of course, started talking about those posters being up after the election. And then we had the at-large primary, and, you know, we basically, as you indicated in your opener, shamed people.

BROWNAnd I don't know if we're allowed to put people on blast, but I think that we know some of the problematic...

NNAMDIWho's the biggest bandit in this regard?

BROWNWell, during the time, and I will give him credit, this election cycle, it was current at-large Councilmember Vincent Orange.

NNAMDIV.O., biggest bandit in terms of leaving his campaign posters up too long.

BROWNRight.

NNAMDIAnd how did Twitter help to have him and others take them down?

BROWNWell, I think, like I said, individuals from across the city begin to complain both to DPW, as well as to the campaign themselves, to the point of, if you were -- continue to have the posters up after that 30-day grace period, you know, we'd continue to report you to DPW. So we just continued to hammer it and hammer it and hammer it to the point of being -- them being proactive this go-around.

BROWNSo it was a matter of bringing quality of life and accountability into the picture, I think.

NNAMDIOne local example of how Twitter is changing things, but, Martin Austermuhle, you tell me that our at-large councilmember, Mr. Orange, has a specific manner of tweeting.

AUSTERMUHLEYeah, he tweets in the third person. So Vincent Orange's Twitter account actually says Vincent Orange will be appearing at X event on Saturday. And this is one of the things that, I think, highlights a problem that we have in the District whereas that you have more and more elected officials and more and more people running for open seats who are using Twitter.

AUSTERMUHLEBut they're not using it particularly well. Or they're still trying to figure it out as they go along and watching this in real time because it's public. It's out in the open. It's probably the most comical part of it, and, I think, Vincent Orange exemplifies that, that he still refers to himself in the third person. I mean, you can refer to yourself personally using Twitter.

NNAMDIWell, V.O., rest assured that you can send us a tweet @kojoshow. If you'd like to join this conversation, you can also send email to kojo@wamu.org. Go to our website, kojoshow.org. Join the conversation there. What Twitter accounts do you think are essential to understanding local politics and culture? You can send them to us via Twitter, and we'll compile a list of local Twitter users.

NNAMDIWe're using #techtuesday. That's number sign followed by techtuesday, one word, #techtuesday. Or you can call us, 800-433-8850. At its worst, Twitter can be a very crude tool for updating people about boring things that they have no interest in knowing. Who really needs to know that I'm stuck in line, and I'm getting more frustrated? But these 140-character postings can also provide powerful news in real time.

NNAMDIMartin, this is particularly true on election night, is it not?

AUSTERMUHLEYeah, I mean, in the April 26 at-large special election, and also last year during the primary in the general election, it was great because all the reporters who used Twitter were updating as the election happened during the day from polling sites saying, you know, there's problems at Precinct 141. Someone has to address this, and the board of elections and ethics would. Or when they're actually counting the votes at the board of election and ethics headquarters, I mean, people were updating as precincts were coming in.

AUSTERMUHLESo it was really -- it was hectic, but it was interesting. And you could see the -- you could almost see the election evolve and develop as it was happening. It was really pretty exciting.

NNAMDICare to comment on that, Mandy?

JENKINSYeah, you know, it was really interesting because not only were the reporters really active on Twitter during the election, but lots of voters were, too. I mean, not only just saying who they voted for or that they voted today, but they were really trying to get out the word about the things that they cared about. You saw a lot of that with the primaries last fall in particular, and it was really exciting to see all of that happen.

JENKINSAnd, honestly, it was really great, like Martin said, to see the people who were using Twitter to report problems that they had with voting. It really kind of brought attention to people who otherwise might have gotten ignored.

NNAMDISome people may not have noticed, but, as we speak, we're broadcasting on radio, among the oldest of old media, talking about Twitter and new media. Hopefully, we don't sound like old fogies during this conversation, but, I guess, that means we need to lay down some basic information. What is Twitter? What makes it different than other social media or communication technology, Ashley?

PARKERWell, you know, it's a microblogging platform, so you can only use 140 characters or less. So it's worse, like you said, that somebody is saying what they had for lunch, but, in a way, sort of the constraints, you know, force people to be a little more pithy or witty or really condense their thoughts, which is probably a good skill to have. So that's one difference.

NNAMDIIt was the new media tweet that launched a good old-fashioned Washington sex scandal. Ashley, when racy pictures first emerged from Congressman Anthony Weiner's Twitter account, that set in motion a whole series of events which culminated in his resignation. We're not going to go deeply into his bad judgment, but you say that there was something incredibly ironic, even Shakespearian, about the saga of Anthony Weiner.

PARKERYeah, well, one -- so one funny thing was I had actually sat down and interviewed him a few days before the scandal broke, and it was because my editor had said, you know, Congressman Weiner, he has a really interesting Twitter account. It's sort of like his personality. It's brash. It's aggressive. It's funny. It's feisty. And he's going to get himself in trouble one day and...

NNAMDIAll of those in the same sentence.

PARKERYeah, and we know never could have imagined he would get himself in trouble the way he did. We thought he might offend a certain group or a person or go a step too far. But when I interviewed him, of all of the politicians, he was very savvy about Twitter. He really understood the use. He understood how to use hashtags, how to retweet at people.

PARKERAnd so for someone who was such a master at Twitter to get embroiled in a very basic Twitter scandal was sort of the peak of irony.

NNAMDIWhat did he himself actually say about Twitter and how he uses it?

PARKERHe was sort of a student of Twitter. He was learning a lot. One thing that was interesting was he really talking about his Twitter community, how the people who followed him were New Yorkers, and he was really trying to learn from them. So he said he would use it to, you know, at its core, like any politician, to tweet out what he's doing, initiatives he cared about.

PARKERBut he said he would try to be funny, try to be engaging, try to put insider New Yorker jokes that his constituents might appreciate. So he really used it as an extension of his personality.

NNAMDITalk about famous last words.

NNAMDIMore than half of Twitter users log on to the service using a mobile device, and it's that mobility that is really driving its expansion. Sylvia, how do you tweet? What devices do you have?

BROWNWell, I'm certainly utilizing my cell phone primarily. I may do it at -- when I'm at my desk, on the laptop, but it's primarily by cell phone because sort of if I'm driving through the neighborhood, I see a problematic, say, now we're in the grass-cutting season, and see a problematic property that needs to be cut by grass, I'll tweet that to one of the city agencies.

NNAMDIFirst, you'll pull over, right?

BROWNCertainly, certainly, certainly, certainly, certainly.

BROWNDefinitely, I'll pull over and take that picture. Certainly, during the campaign signs, I would take pictures of the sign, send that to DPW. Certainly...

NNAMDIDPW, I think, has a hashtag for that, doesn't it?

BROWNWell, that's DCRA.

NNAMDIDCRA.

BROWNDepartment of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs has their #cutyourgrassdc. DPW, unfortunately, I don't think they manage the staff capability to step that particular aspect up. But I did want to point out that one of the things that Martin mentioned earlier about either politicos or government people not utilizing Twitter effectively, because with Twitter and microblogging, et cetera, you're creating a community in addition to extending your community.

BROWNAnd I think that those individuals, those government entities that choose not to figure out a way to effectively and efficiently use Twitter are missing out on an opportunity to extend their community and engage their targeted population.

NNAMDIMartin, how do you tweet? What devices do you have?

AUSTERMUHLEThe majority of the time, I'll be at my work computer, and I'll do it from there. But I do have my iPhone. And I should point out the three of the four of us have our phones in front of us right now, and I think we all have Twitter. I think I've seen Mandy tweet. I've tweeted already. So it's multimodal here, Kojo. We're talking on the radio while we're tweeting ourselves, so...

NNAMDIWe got a tweet from @susiecambry (sp?), who says, "As @dcist_martin said, some elected folks are bad at Twitter, but they are also bad at engaging residents and stakeholders in other ways." Mandy, what devices do you use?

JENKINSI'm primarily on my computer because I'm usually running lots of accounts for news organizations, so I'm actually more of a Twitter reader. So I use my computer just to read tons and tons of tweets. It's just like the matrix going on.

NNAMDIYeah, my TweetDeck is up all the time, and it's popping up all the time. It can be very engaging. Well, some other people would say distracting, but I consider -- every time I look at a tweet, I get new information. What devices do you use, Ashley?

PARKERI use TweetDeck on my computer. And, actually, I love it, but I find it distracting, too. If I actually have to write an article, I have to close TweetDeck...

NNAMDIThey can be, too.

PARKER...so I can get some work done. And then I have a Twitter application on my BlackBerry.

NNAMDIWhy do we have to close it? Because, invariably, we feel the compulsion to read whatever comes up, don't we?

PARKERAnd then it's like going down a wormhole because you'll the read the tweet and then there's a link. And you'll click the link and...

AUSTERMUHLERight.

NNAMDIExactly.

PARKER...it's fascinating, but...

NNAMDIYeah, but it can be distracting at times. We're going to take a short break. This is Tech Tuesday. We're discussing Understanding Your Neighborhood Through Twitter. Inviting your calls at 800-433-8850, your tweets @kojoshow, email to kojo@wamu.org. Or go to our website, ask a question or make a comment. That's kojoshow.org. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back to Tech Tuesday, Understanding Your Neighborhood Through Twitter. Joining us in studio is Ashley Parker. She's a reporter of The New York Times who recently started a Twitter column "Trending N.Y.C." on The New York Times' website. She tweets @ashleyrparker. She joins us in studio along with Sylvia Brown, who is an advisory neighborhood commissioner in the Deanwood neighborhood of Northeast Washington.

NNAMDIShe tweets at @anc7c04. Mandy Jenkins, a social news editor at The Huffington Post, where she covers Washington from a national perspective. She tweets at @mjenkins. And Martin Austermuhle is senior editor at dcist.com. He tweets at @dcist_martin. On to the telephones, here is Rita in Fort Washington, Md. Rita, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

RITAThank you for taking my call. It's funny. Today, I was planning to learn how to tweet because I keep hearing about it, and so I was anxious to hear your show. But I'm hearing about tweeting, but I don't know how to start tweeting.

NNAMDIMandy has some good resources on her website, but she can hip you to that.

JENKINSWell, hi, Rita.

RITAHi.

JENKINSI think, first of all, the best thing that you want to do is start figuring out who you want to be reading on Twitter before you ever even have to worry about tweeting yourself. There's reading other people, seeing how they're using it and sometimes replying to the things they're saying, that's the best way to get started 'cause that way, you're kind of starting to figure out how you want to interact with people and what you're comfortable with.

JENKINSAnd I write up a lot of resources like this 'cause I train journalists. So if you ever want to see any of the stuff I've written, it's at zombiejournalism.com/resources.

NNAMDIZombiejournalism.com/resources. You'll find a link to that at our website, kojoshow.org. So that's a starting point. Any more advice for Rita, Mandy?

JENKINSAnother thing...

RITARight.

JENKINS...too, is to just kind of find the people that are going to be talking about the things that you care about.

NNAMDIAnd how does she find those people?

JENKINSI think the best way to do that -- there's this great resource where you can actually search Twitter at search.twitter.com. You go there, put in any keywords. So if you want to put in the name of your neighborhood and see who's tweeting about your neighborhood, about issues you care about, shows you watch, anything you want to do, it's a great way to see what's being talked about right now.

NNAMDIAnd we are asking the -- go ahead, please, Rita.

RITAThat kind of helps to narrow it down, I guess, so you won't -- you're not -- I hear what you're saying about being -- completely going down this black hole somewhere else you didn't intend to go. So it would help cut down those links, I guess.

NNAMDIYeah, but, Rita, good luck to you and thank you for your call. You, too, can call us at 800-433-8850. What Twitter accounts do you think are essential to understanding local politics and culture? Send them to us via Twitter. We'll compile a list of local Twitter users. We're using the #techtuesday. That's a number sign, followed by techtuesday -- one word -- #techtuesday. Who do you follow, Ashley?

PARKERSee, when I lived -- so it's funny. I follow a mix of journalists and politicians and friends. But when I lived in D.C., I was really into food carts. And so I followed all of the food carts in the city, so I would know when they were by my office and when the line was short at the mac and cheese truck, and I could run out. So it has some very practical purposes as well.

NNAMDIWho do you follow, Martin?

AUSTERMUHLEWell, being that my beat is local politics, I focal all the elected officials that use Twitter. I follow them. I follow all the local journalists that do local politics, a lot of the food trucks and things like that, too. I'd say that's the majority. But it's surprising -- and this probably speaks to what Rita was bringing up -- is that it's surprising how quickly you can follow just hundreds and hundreds upon thousands of people without even realizing it.

AUSTERMUHLEBecause you follow one person, you realize they're following three other people that have similar interests. Next thing you know, you're following them. And it just grows exponentially. And that's, again, like we've all mentioned, you're using TweetDeck. You're using Twitter on your phone, your computer.

AUSTERMUHLEAnd you're constantly checking because if you're following 1,000 people, and even if only half of them are tweeting once a minute, that's a lot of messages coming your way at a time.

NNAMDIWe got a tweet from @Blacknell who says, "You should have invited @tomsherwood for the senior perspective."

NNAMDIThank you so much, @Blacknell. Who do follow, Sylvia?

BROWNCertainly, a lot of my civic activism tweeps, as we call each other, neighbors in Ward 7, dizzyluv, HillcrestWard7, certainly ThBrightwoodian, @IMGoph, bogrosemary. That's a pretty significant rundown and shout-out to those folks because -- and it's not just -- because a lot of times, I haven't even met a number of those folks that I follow. But, again, this goes back to a created and extended community.

BROWNAnd so that when you do meet these individuals, you have some commonalities. I know that, of course, within D.C. politics, the mayor has his one city phrase. And I think the folks on Twitter using it through this hyperlocal mechanism are really creating that and making that less of a slogan and more of something that's real.

NNAMDIMartin?

AUSTERMUHLEI just think it's interesting. I mean, I've been on Twitter for about a year and changed it by the end of the month. And I think Sylvia was one of the -- amongst the first, like, slew of people I started following in. But this is probably, I think, the first or second time...

BROWNRight.

AUSTERMUHLE…we've either met in person or been in the same place at the same time.

BROWNRight.

AUSTERMUHLEBut, you know, we have extended conversations over Twitter. We retweet each other. We talk about local politics. But as -- kind of the interesting part and also the strange part of Twitter is that you could meet someone that you've been following for two years, and they've been following you. And you could feel like your best friend's on Twitter...

BROWNRight.

AUSTERMUHLE...and then you suddenly meet in person. You're just like, wow, this is actually a physical entity with a real name that's not a Twitter handle.

NNAMDIBut as a journalist, it allows you to expand your sources, doesn't it?

AUSTERMUHLEAbsolutely. I mean, I don't think I've ever been -- actually, no. I've had some people giving me kind of, you know, tips and things like that using Twitter. It's always using the direct message function, which is what Anthony Weiner mistakenly didn't do. He tweeted out instead of using the direct message. But, yeah, it does -- it allows you to expand your world exponentially in terms of sources, in terms of friends.

NNAMDIWhat would cause somebody who is that Twitter savvy to use the public instead of sending messages?

BROWNI mean, he sort of -- basically, he made a mistake. And he realized his mistake immediately because he was so savvy...

NNAMDIYeah.

BROWN...and so that was why the first cover-up ensued. But...

NNAMDIYeah, yeah. Here's Ruthie in Edmonston, Md. Ruthie, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

RUTHIEHi, Kojo. Thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to share how Twitter has really helped my business solve a problem with reaching out to local neighborhood. I work at a place called Community Forklift. We're a nonprofit thrift store that specializes in home improvement and architectural salvage. And so...

NNAMDIDidn't we meet you at Kojo in your community in Greenbelt?

RUTHIEYou sure did, yeah.

NNAMDIOkay. Go right ahead, Ruthie.

RUTHIEIt's a really cool place to work, and everybody loves to find out about it. But, of course, we're nonprofit and so limited resources. And we often have people say, oh, can you call me when you get a new batch of wood flooring in or when you get a maple cabinet set? And it's impossible to keep track of all of the hundreds of people's requests. But we have started using Twitter now to tweet whenever we get something in that we know is going to be popular.

RUTHIEOr if we get a whole truckload of granite kitchen counter scraps, then we say, hey, come and get them, there's a good supply. And so it's really helped us to kind of build loyalty with our regulars. And then, sometimes, you know, they don't need whatever we've tweeted about. But it's a reminder to them, oh, I have something I need to donate to the thrift store.

RUTHIEAnd it's been really helpful for me following the different neighborhoods, folks who often have blogs and then they also tweet because it's helped me to kind of build connections with people in some of the older neighborhoods in D.C. who maybe, you know, can help me reach out to folks on Capitol Hill or, you know, some of the places where there's a lot of renovations going on in (word?) and so it's really helped our nonprofit big time.

NNAMDIIt is how Ashley used to follow and forage for food when she lived in the Washington area. And, Mandy, I'm just wondering if more and more businesses are including this in their business model, so to speak, 'cause it's a way both of reaching out and of getting information about what people want and need?

JENKINSYou definitely see that more and more all the time. Especially, small locally owned places are really starting to get a feel for how that can really work for them. People can communicate with them when they're having a problem. There's something going on at their store -- if they have questions, it's an easy way for them to do that. And it's free, so that's the best part.

NNAMDIMm hmm.

JENKINSThey don't even have to necessarily pay someone else to do that.

NNAMDIRuthie, thank you very much for your call. Good luck to you. For a long time, we've been talking about the digital divide between people who have access to technology and those that don't. But Twitter is also noteworthy because who is taking it up. Mandy, it turns out that people of color seem to be turning to Twitter at a much higher rate than the general public. Any understanding of why that may be?

JENKINSWell, I think that's definitely tied to the fact there's such a rise in mobile phone ownership, too, and that you can do this from any phone. You don't even have to have a fancy phone like the ones that we're all using here. I mean, anyone can tweet, so it's an easy way to keep in touch with everybody. And you especially see this -- I watch the trending topics in D.C. a lot. I'm kind of obsessed with them. You can go to trendsmap.com, and I spend way too much time there.

JENKINSBut you definitely see them shift throughout the day, especially later in the evening when you have a lot of a younger, more minority audience that's tweeting back and forth to one another. You see the trending topics change, and it's very, very funny to watch that kind of happen. And, you know, sometimes the stuff, it's about politics. Sometimes, it's just something fun that's going around.

NNAMDIAnd sometimes, it's about Gilbert Arenas, but that's a whole another story.

JENKINSYeah, and sometimes, it's about sports. It can just be about anything. But you definitely see those topics shift throughout the day. And you see the faces on the avatars change throughout the day, too.

NNAMDIMm hmm. Which means that a lot of people who don't necessarily have either desktops or laptops in their home, Sylvia, can still be a part of the Twitter world.

BROWNSure. And it's all about trying to have a conversation, as we've advised the listener earlier, Rita. It's a matter of finding what's of interest to you and being a part of that conversation. And, again, the keyword is conversation. It's not, you know, you dominating or not listening. It's about creating that dialogue and having a communication channel...

NNAMDIMartin?

AUSTERMUHLEI absolutely agree. I think the issue of conversation is key. And that's why a lot of elected officials haven't gotten it right because, to them, it's just the means to send links to the press releases that are on their websites.

NNAMDII hate those.

AUSTERMUHLEAnd that's not a conversation. That's you advertising yourself, which is fine, but it has its limits.

BROWNMix it up.

NNAMDIHey, admire me, yes.

AUSTERMUHLEYeah, and the other thing that I wanted to mention is that even though Twitter is this amazing tool and you can reach out to such a universe out there, it's also somewhat human nature that we can limit ourselves, like, to our little digital enclaves and find people to think like us and talk like us and are like us. And then we think that we're surrounded by such diversity when we're really kind of we found our own little echo chamber.

AUSTERMUHLESo it's important to be, you know, like Mandy said, to be a little bit broader in who you look for and what's -- what trends you're looking at, and assume that just because the people that you're following are saying a certain thing that not everyone else is in on that conversation or has any clue what you're talking about 'cause there's a good chance that they don't.

NNAMDIWell, Ashley, if there's a couple of thousand or a couple of million conversations happening simultaneously, we need some way to organize them, some way to connect people who have the same interest, but may not know each other -- a hashtag. You recently wrote about the significant and the curious origins of hashtags.

PARKERYes. So when hashtag -- so hashtags have existed in sort of previous tech communities, pre-Twitter, which is an important point. But when they started in Twitter, there was this one guy, his name is Christmas Xena, (sp?) and he's the self-described godfather of hash. And in August 2007, he suggested, why don't we use a hashtag, which is the pound sign, in order to organize and search our tweets?

PARKERAnd so, first, it took a while to catch on, and then it caught on very quickly. So people are using them for hashtags. And then we saw, as we often see in sort of natural language, it evolved to people using hashtags for humor, for commentary, for meta-commentary. Just the way we saw when, you know, in email, people started using LOL in email and then people started saying it aloud. We saw the same thing happen with hashtags on Twitter.

NNAMDI800-433-8850. Here's Cassandra in Silver Spring, Md. Cassandra, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

CASSANDRAYes, thank you. I'd like to ask you, Kojo, and your panelists if you think that between tweets and texting and maybe I'll even throw in email, we are actually short-circuiting our brains and ruining them for higher order thinking, more complex thinking and the ability to communicate intelligently with the rest of the world in our headlong rush into these new, simpler communication tools.

NNAMDIWell, interestingly enough, we had a show on that, and the neuroscience at this point -- if I recall correctly, and my producers will correct me if I'm wrong -- seems to be saying that it is, in fact, expanding our ability to communicate in a variety of different ways, that the brain adjusts very easily to new things and that does not make it forget necessarily how to do things the old way or in ways that, in the case of Twitter, the majority of people are still communicating without using Twitter and people who tweet have to live in that world also.

NNAMDISo they're apparently learning to do a variety of things. But I'll allow each panelist to give an individual response to that, starting with you, Martin Austermuhle.

AUSTERMUHLEI mean, halfway through the question, I just started paying attention to my phone. I'm just kidding.

AUSTERMUHLEI fully understood what was going there. No. I tend to be one of the people that used to sort of -- does believe that there is something fundamentally changing in the way that I think and engage with people. And you see it. You -- in any of the campaign forums I'd go to during last year's election season or this year's election season, everybody has their phone out.

AUSTERMUHLEAnd you could approach someone, interact directly, and they're still holding their phone. They're checking their phone. They're having a conversation. And I think we're in a -- at this point in time where our sense of what's appropriate and what's not, is changing, you know? I still think it's a little bit rude if, you know, you're talking to someone face-to-face and you're checking your phone at the same time.

AUSTERMUHLEA little bit of a no-no, but I think maybe a younger generation thinks differently. Maybe 20 years down the line, it'll be totally normal.

NNAMDIAshley.

PARKERYou know, I think, like with most technology, there's a trade-off. But for me, in terms of breaking news, I found that Twitter is one of the best places. When Gabby Giffords was shot, when bin Laden was killed, the first place I heard about all of that was on Twitter.

NNAMDIAnd in your case, Mandy -- well, let me extend the conversation a little bit because it seems to me that there are some people who would say that you may think of it as communicating in 140 characters, but Twitter is actually a very long ongoing conversation. Is it not?

JENKINSIt definitely is, and it's a conversation that can invite a lot of different people, people you'd never met, people you know. And it's something that can go on indefinitely. It isn't just 140 characters.

NNAMDIIt limits you to 140 characters per statement, but that's not necessarily the end of the conversation.

JENKINSExactly. And, you know, and it's a way to bring a lot of other people in. When you have 140 characters for this person, another for this person, they can talk to one another, and it can really grow out from there. It kind of creates a cloud of conversation more so than just a one-to-one little 140-character statements.

NNAMDINot to mention that it cuts out some long-windedness, but here's Sylvia.

BROWNRight. But, yeah, that term long-windedness is certainly something that is important. I know that certainly in my role as advisory neighborhood commissioner, a significant number of my neighbors are seniors, and so the best way for me to advocate on their behalf is to utilize all effective communications channels.

BROWNAnd so if Twitter is one those channels, then that just makes me that much more effective and gets the Deanwood neighborhood needs out there to a broader population and, again, utilizing examples of engagement or activity that, say, another neighborhood in Ward 4 or Ward 5 or Ward 6, what have you, has done to make some things happen for them.

BROWNSo it's -- again, it's not a end-all, be-all. It's a method to getting results and getting -- making things happen.

NNAMDICassandra, thank you very much for your call. Is there anything you'd like to add to that?

CASSANDRAWell, I will simply say I'm not buying it. I don't think that between the speed of communications and the lack of reflection that most people put into such messaging leads to critical thinking or reasonable thought. I think a lot of proof of that is Sarah Palin and Anthony Weiner. But maybe they are just extremes. But that's just mine. I'm going to go look up your previous program on this subject, Kojo, and I do thank the panelists for their consideration.

BROWNThank you.

NNAMDIWe'll post links to our previous discussions on this topic, Cassandra. Thank you so much for your call.

BROWNI think there's a key difference when you have someone on such a high level, those two individuals that she mentioned versus the hyperlocal activity of what we're doing. You will find some differences in the type of communication that you get, whether that is from the social media, the new media or from the old media. So I think that you certainly need to distinguish between the level of influencers, if you will, versus the local level.

NNAMDIAgain, Cassandra, thank you for your call. We’ve got to take a short break. When we come back, we'll continue this Tech Tuesday conversation about Twitter and understanding local issues and your neighborhood through Twitter. But you can still call us at 800-433-8850, or better yet send us a tweet @kojoshow, email to kojo@wamu.org. Or join the conversation at our website, kojoshow.org. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back to today's Tech Tuesday conversation on trying to understand our neighborhoods better through Twitter. We're talking with Sylvia Brown. She's an advisory neighborhood commissioner in the Deanwood neighborhood of Northeast Washington. She tweets at @anc7c04. Mandy Jenkins is social news editor at The Huffington Post, where she covers Washington from a national perspective. She tweets at @mjenkins.

NNAMDIAshley Parker is a reporter at The New York Times. She recently started a Twitter column called "Trending N.Y.C." on The New York Times website. She tweets at @AshleyRParker. And Martin Austermuhle is senior editor at DCist.com. He tweets at @dcist_martin. We got a tweet from @QuoVadismusDC who says, "As a food blogger, Twitter is a great way to interact with chefs who might otherwise not hear my feedback at Tech Tuesday."

NNAMDIWe got a tweet from @mysnarecmp. "What does MT mean? I know what RT, just not MT." The answer, MT means modified tweet. Could you give us some other jargon that some of our listeners may not know, Martin?

AUSTERMUHLEI'm going to hand this question off 'cause I'm pretty -- I'm a pretty early -- late adopter to Twitter, but...

NNAMDIREDC. REDC.

AUSTERMUHLEOh, REDC was the hashtag that people were using for the whole redistricting process that just happened in the District and then -- I'm going to plug myself here. For the April 26 at-large special election, myself and a couple other people coined 426DC as a way to kind of organize all the stuff related to the election, worked well because it's a relatively small election. But we've already got one for the 2012 election, which is DC2012, I believe.

BROWNI thought that was decision 12 or...

AUSTERMUHLEWell, this is the problem. There's always fights over hashtags. We're not competing hashtags, but...

NNAMDIWhat are some of the things that our -- members of our listening audience may be puzzled about and need to know when they see these acronyms?

PARKERWell, I think that -- one thing that's definitely a local one, I think probably the most used hashtag locally is WMATA, and it was used occasionally to complain about Metro, to report anything happening on Metro and then, for a long time, to shame Metro and actually listening to people's complaints. So I think that one's probably the one people see most often just because it -- if they have anyone that rides Metro, they see that happen.

NNAMDIAnd here's one we got at #TechTuesday. It came from @TBDNewsTalk, also known as Bruce DePuyt. "It's still considered rude to check your phone while talking to someone in person, but that may be changing." And then we got a tweet from @KevinRobillard. "This is Courtland Milloy's least favorite @kojoshow ever." Myopic little tweets is what Courtland Milloy said in his column. You, too, can participate in this conversation by sending us a tweet, @kojoshow.

NNAMDIMartin, one of the reasons why we thought this show could be useful came from following some of your tweets. In the last few months, we've seen two interesting stories developing over weeks at a time in D.C. politics, the special election that Sylvia talked about earlier to fill an at-large seat on the D.C. Council and a new way of redistricting.

NNAMDIOf course, you can see why these are important stories, but you might not know what you are reading about if you just stumbled on the Twitter trails and saw the #REDC or 426DC. Tell us about how these stories evolved on Twitter.

AUSTERMUHLEI mean, agreed. I think if anybody just jumped in, though, through a conversation and saw the REDC hashtag, they probably have no clue, but that's the beauty of it. You click on it, and you see the entire history of the conversation. At some point, you're going to stumble across tweets and start making a little more sense. And then once you're in the conversation, it's really easy to catch up because there's so much information coming at you. It was pretty much the same thing with the 426DC.

NNAMDIWe discussed, a few of us, and also with help from the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics, which is active on Twitter and is great on Twitter, we decided, you know, maybe the best thing to do for such a small election is to have one place where people can find information on Twitter. Admittedly, it wasn't -- it's a very small universe of people that were using the hashtag, but I think that it was being used as a step in the right direction. Hopefully, for the next election, it'll be even bigger and broader and more people participate.

NNAMDISylvia, you can talk a little more about local institutions and how they respond to constituent complaints over Twitter. You recently helped mobilize people to oppose a liquor license being granted to a business in Deanwood. Please explain.

BROWNRight. So the whole ANC process, one of the key tasks that we do is to approve or disapprove liquor licenses. And within the Deanwood neighborhood, there are upwards of 12 liquor stores, oftentimes next door to each other. And so when this new application was filed, it certainly began as, you know, one singular ANC commissioner opposing that liquor license and having to -- trying to get the business to focus on being a restaurant, offering food service.

BROWNAnd then my neighbors and I -- Sherrie in D.C., Omani, Lovejoy and a couple of others -- began to galvanize our neighbors, both in a face-to-face conversation in the community, passing out flyers but also raising it to the level of the DCRA, which had the business -- had been allowing a vendor to operate without a license, raising it to the profile of average Twitter account. And we also started a hashtag, #nomoreliquorstores.

BROWNAnd so that allowed people to follow along who were across the city or within the neighborhood. And, again, it was not just one venue of communication. Instead it was able to capitalize on a number of communications channel.

NNAMDIIt's my understanding that, on the other hand, some government agencies are being, themselves, proactive. The Department of Transportation created a hashtag called potholepalooza to group request for road repairs.

BROWNRight. DDOT, of course, is a great Twitter leader in government 2.0. DDOTDC for those who want to begin following that. Of course, I mentioned earlier Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, DCRA. They also have a hashtag for the grass-cutting season, #cutyourgrassDC. DPW, I mentioned earlier, I believe they are DPW_DC. Again, their capacity isn't as great as several of us would like, but they are at least responsive and are following their Twitter handle and Twitter feed.

NNAMDIAshley, Mandy, Twitter hashtags are often used at conferences and other get-togethers that take place in the brick-and-mortar world. Sometimes organizers will agree on a Twitter hashtag that will allow participants to follow each other. You just went to a Netroots Nation event in Philly, correct, Mandy?

JENKINSIn Minneapolis.

NNAMDIIn Minneapolis.

JENKINSYeah, but...

NNAMDIAnd you live-tweeted it.

JENKINSWell, occasionally. I think the thing that's really great about those -- the hashtags during events is it allows people to have a back channel conversation about what's happening on the stage. Now, it can be a good back channel conversation if everyone is liking the speaker and the speaker is being engaging. But if people don't like it or they feel like they're not getting to something, it will show up on that back channel, and that speaker...

NNAMDIAshley has an interesting story about the White House correspondence dinner in that regard. Ashley?

PARKERYeah, so one thing that's also interesting is to see how these hashtags form. So the White House correspondence dinner is sort of the annual journalist prom every year. And people began using the #whca for White House correspondence dinner. And then another group of people began using the #nerdprom, which is what it's sort of colloquial -- colloquially referred to in D.C. And sort of whoever the people who started nerdprom were kind of like a cool set of early adopters. And so the Twitter sphere kind of organically all moved to nerdprom and left behind the other hashtag.

NNAMDIWho knows? Here in Eric in Ocean City, Md. Eric, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

ERICHello. Can you hear me?

NNAMDIYes, we can.

ERICYes. Thank you for taking my call. Before I ask my question, I just want to know, Mr. Kojo, are your show's archive in mp3 format? It can be downloaded?

NNAMDIYep. It can be downloaded. And you can -- we can -- you can have them for your iPod. You can -- we have transcripts also that are now available for the show, Eric.

ERICOkay. Well, thank you 'cause I'd be really interested in the earlier Tech Tuesday shows since you cover a lot of interesting subjects. My main question is I've been reluctant to get on Facebook because I found too many people that end up being friends of friends that say things that they don't want to get back to their boyfriends that end up finding the information out, if you know what I mean.

ERICSo I want to know, as far as security, how does Twitter compare with Facebook? And what kind of sequences are -- or what things can they do to control who can have access to what information?

NNAMDII'll go with Mandy on that one.

JENKINSWell, one thing that's great about Twitter is the most information that's out there is whatever you choose to put out there. So you could be anybody. It's sort of that old thing about no one on -- the good thing about the Internet is no one knows that you're a dog. It can totally be that way on Twitter if you wanted to kind of be more anonymous. And you can have a completely private account that only friends can see your tweets. So that is an option.

JENKINSBut in terms of personal information, whatever you choose to share is all that's connected to your account. You don't even have to have a location or a real name.

ERICWhat I mainly mean is if you're following somebody and you're one of several thousand people, can they actually backtrack to find out you're one of the ones who are following them?

JENKINSThey can see if you're following them, but you don't have to follow somebody in order to read them.

ERICOkay. So, really, it's nothing like Facebook is as far as you have to be so secure that so and so doesn't get this and tells somebody about that.

JENKINSI think so.

NNAMDII think you're right...

JENKINSYeah.

NNAMDI...Eric. But, you know, anything at all that you're putting into the public sphere, you have to be careful about what you say. That's, I guess, the rule of thumb.

JENKINSIf we learned anything...

ERICI understand that. I'm just talking about the friends feature of Facebook 'cause they've changed the security over the years, supposedly. So, now, if you know what you're doing, you can set it up so only certain people have access to your information versus before in which it just went out to everybody. So that's the only thing I was concerned about. Thank you for the information.

NNAMDIAnd thank you for your call, Eric. Ashley, you just started, as we mentioned earlier, a Twitter column on The New York Times website called "Trending N.Y.C." Tell us about that.

PARKERWell, so it's actually a social media editor at the Times had the good idea to add a hashtag before it. So it's now #trendingnyc...

NNAMDIIt is indeed.

PARKER...to make it more searchable and other people can join the discussion on Twitter that way. Basically, what we do is we pull -- so, as Mandy mentioned, you can sort of geo tag your tweets. You don't have to, but you can say that you're tweeting from the New York area or the D.C. area. So we pull tweets from everybody within a certain radius of New York City, and we take snapshots of what they're tweeting every 30 minutes, basically.

PARKERThen you can look and you can see what topics are trending every single day. And we find that New Yorkers, like the rest of the country, will tweet about, you know, they love Justin Bieber, just like everyone else.

NNAMDIYeah.

PARKERThey celebrate Father's Day. But you can pull out some sort of specific New York tweets, and it's interesting to see what New Yorkers have been talking about that past week.

NNAMDIMandy, how do you differentiate between something that's trending everywhere like the aforementioned Justin you know who and something that is unique to Washington? And how do you figure out why it's trending?

JENKINSWell, as I mentioned earlier, I use the site Trendsmap, and you can actually see trends just for the Washington, D.C. area. And it's -- and like I said, they change a lot during the day, but you actually have a way where you can go in and look at the trends and see what tweets are mentioning these trending words. So during the day, a lot of the time it tends to be stuff that's coming out of Congress 'cause all these aides in Congress are tweeting all the time, all these journalists are tweeting all the time. And then at night it gets a little bit more fun.

NNAMDIMartin, every Friday on this broadcast, we talk about local politics. It's a chance to hear from local political leaders in their own words and get a little inside baseball commentary. Maybe one of the better ways to think about Twitter is that it's a similar kind of conversation. It's just happening 24/7.

AUSTERMUHLEAbsolutely. I mean -- and just put it this way. When you and Tom Sherwood and whoever your guest is, you're talking on the show on a Friday, there's a whole another world of people that are tweeting back and forth. They're live-tweeting the show. So I don't even have to listen to the show anymore, though I do religiously. By the way, I just created a #kojofanclub, just, you know, to throw it out there.

NNAMDIOh, yeah.

AUSTERMUHLESo, anyhow, you can be -- you could -- I could come back two hours later. If I'm at a work meeting and I missed the show, I could come back and get a sense of what was said, who said it. I mean, even, you know, Tom Sherwood could tweet during the show. And so, yeah, it's just different conversations happening at different time. They're just hugely accessible at any -- you know, from your phone, from your computer, any time of the day. It's great.

NNAMDIHashtags can also serve as a kind of wink, if you will, or ironic statement at the end of a posting. Congressman Weiner apparently told you that he often composes his tweets -- or did compose his tweets -- backwards. Explain what that means.

PARKERSo the same way the satirical newspaper, The Onion, they often -- they write all the headlines first, and then they write the articles. Congressman Weiner said that he would sometimes think of a funny hashtag and then compose the tweet around that. And he said he sort of thought of it as like a shot and then the chaser. The tweet was the shot and the hashtag was the chaser, the added something, you know, a little extra, a little smoother, a little better.

NNAMDIWell, do you ever use tweets like that, think of the hashtag first and then figure out what you're going to say afterward?

AUSTERMUHLEYeah, it'd be perfectly awesome. I'm not clever enough to do that. So I just try to be as witty in the tweet itself and use 140 characters and just leave it at that.

NNAMDIHow do you think tweets work -- help dcist.com to work better for you?

AUSTERMUHLEWell, I mean, just like with any news outlet, I think, number one, you are able to say, hey, listen, we got a post-up about X issue, but, at the same time, you interact with readers. You get a sense -- like if I'm covering local politics, I can tweet back and forth with an elected official or the staff of an elected official. And I'm just going to shout them out. I think, like, Councilmember Tommy Wells, Councilmember David Catania, they have staff members who are actually on Twitter and interact with constituents and with journalists.

AUSTERMUHLEAnd I think, in that sense, it helps inform our work and it helps -- you know, there's a dialogue there that's happening consistently, and, you know, it can happen. You don't even have to pick up the phone, which is great.

NNAMDIJustin Bieber has over 10 million followers on Twitter. "The Kojo Nnamdi Show" has 5,000. Not that I have any delusions of grandeur, but is Justin Bieber 2,000 times more important than I am?

BROWNNo. I mean, I think that there are certainly a number of apps that are out there that can determine your clout. But it's all in the mind of those people that are following you.

NNAMDIIt's easy to get caught up in numbers. But the -- but Twitter is actually a raft of interesting data that can paint a more nuanced picture of exactly who is influential and why. But in order to find that out, you're going to have to go to Twitter yourself and start tweeting. I'm afraid that's all the time we have. Sylvia Brown, thank you for joining us.

BROWNThank you, Kojo.

NNAMDISylvia Brown is an Advisory Neighborhood commissioner in the Deanwood district of Northeast Washington. She tweets @anc7c04. Martin Austermuhle, thank you for joining us.

AUSTERMUHLEThanks for having me.

NNAMDIMartin is senior editor at dcist.com. He tweets @dcist_Martin. Mandy Jenkins, good to see you.

JENKINSThanks.

NNAMDIMandy is social news editor at the Huffington Post, where she covers Washington from a national perspective. She tweets at @mjenkins. Ashley Parker, thank you.

PARKERThank you.

NNAMDIAshley is a reporter of The New York Times, recently started a Twitter column, #trendingnyc. She tweets at @ashleyrparker. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.