Ever since I upgraded Adobe Air about 4 days ago, I have had terrible trouble with Snitter. I put it down to Twitter being shaky, but I do no think that is the problem. The only way I can get Snitter to work now is to manually refresh the pane so I get my tweets. So now I have lost synchronicity of Snitter which is what I love so much about it.

Any suggestions about how I can fix this? Thank you so much.

Hi Kevin – thanks for telling me about TinyTwitter. I have hidden my PDA at the moment while I am on holidays but when I get it back out I will give it a road test.

Hi Allison – I am glad you found value in my research. I’m with you. My morning routine starts with reading twitters from overnight then moves onto reading my feeds in Google Reader. Then if time I check the newspaper.

Hi Paul – can totally understand what you are saying regarding getting people to follow you. In the case of well known people, or people who joined twitter early, they must get to a point where they have to make a decision on who to follow. Which makes it so much harder for people starting out with twitter. The only suggestions I can make is ensure your bio is to the point – so people can easily make decisions and always include a link to your website.

I agree that my website lends itself more to attracting twitter followers – because each time I write a post on twitter I get more followers. Another way is I am also involved with our local web and blog community in Western Australia – through these f2f connections I have connected with many others. Going to BarCamp really helped me.

Hi Ralph – I am glad you liked my post. I have to admit being a bit of a serial twitterer however for most of them are replies to people so I don’t overwhelm my twitter network.

Hi Frances – glad you love Snitter why didn’t someone tell us sooner?

The bigger challenge, and the more awkward part, has been in getting people to follow me. I suspect that I’m not alone in this regard. As too many of our students know from painful experience, one-way conversations can be pretty frustrating.

I came relatively late to the Twitter party, and I came without a well established reputation among the edubloggers with whom I hoped to network. So, I was extremely grateful for those who chose to follow me as soon as they noticed I was following them.

I have found that extending my network of followers has required some intentional effort, as well as a dose of patience. I think this process has been good for my overall professional development, and it has probably made me a more responsible member of the edublogging community.

I have forced myself to be more outgoing in terms of making comments on others’ blogs. Some of my contributions seem to have been appreciated, and one by-product has been new followers on Twitter. This process has heightened my awareness of just how important it is to do more than just read blogs.

Still, in a few instances, I have actually contacted people and asked if they would consider following me on Twitter. I generally try to avoid shameless self-promotion, so I have found it exceedingly difficult to take this seemingly presumptuous step. Fortunately, in almost every instance people have been kind and gracious in their responses.

I don’t yet have the kind of blog that lends itself to this type of reflection, so thanks for the opportunity to do it here. I hope my observations are helpful to others because this is something that I have really struggled with.

Some people read the newspaper over breakfast – I read Twitter instead. Allison