# 2720
Over the past couple of weeks I've written about Twitter (see Agencies All Atwitter ) , and how government agencies are moving into this (relatively) new communications medium.
FEMA recently held a press conference using Twitter, and today, the HHS provided a twitter feed (#planfirst) to go along with today's PlanFirst Webcast.
Several flubies, including StandingFirmCM, and Flutrackers also participated, re-tweeting BirdFluGov updates to their followers.
In this way, many more people saw the #planfirst tweets than just those following BirdFluGov.
Kudos to all those involved!
You can follow today's (and future) twitter feed on the PlanFirst broadcast by visiting http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23planfirst
And if you missed the HHS Planfirst broadcast today, it will be archived and available for viewing within a couple of weeks on the HHS site.
Here is the news release on pandemicflu.gov.
PandemicFlu.gov is on Twitter
Follow us at http://twitter.com/BirdFluGov.
More Information about Twitter and How We Plan to Use It
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a free social messaging utility that helps users communicate in real-time. Each message is 140 characters or less in length, and is called a “tweet.” Tweets can be sent and received using computers and mobile devices. Twitter lets you control how many messages you receive by allowing you to choose the users you want to “follow.” Other people can “follow” you to receive your updates. Twitter in Plain English
How does PandemicFlu.gov plan to use Twitter?
Our presence on Twitter is an experiment in progress. We plan to provide updates when information is posted to the PandemicFlu.gov Web site and when there are credible reports about Bird Flu in the mainstream media. There are many other potential uses of the medium and we encourage anyone with ideas to make a suggestion by sending us a tweet.
Will we follow you back?
We recognize that new tools like Twitter derive much of their value from the two-way conversations that they enable. However, participating in these new forums adds additional responsibilities without the benefit of additional resources. To help us manage our workload while experimenting with these new tools, our current approach is to only follow users who have sent meaningful and pertinent replies directly to our Twitter account.
What about Hashtags?
Hashtags (#) help organize tweets on Twitter into user-defined groupings around one general topic, making threaded conversation easy to follow. Individuals from the PanFlu community have suggested that we use the #prep and #panflu hashtags on our Twitter account. For the time being, our intention is to use #planfirst in conjunction with our PlanFirst Webcast series. To see how this would work, try searching for #planfirst on Twitter
