Terry Brock, a graduate student in the anthropology department, talks about his brainchild, Spartan TweetUp. The event was a way for those within the MSU community who use the social networking Web site Twitter.com to meet face-to-face and network about different events on campus. Students and staff from the Union, Physical Plant, University Activities Board and more showed up to the event to meet each other and mingle at Owen Graduate Hall.
Frequent tweeters forgot about @replies and direct messages for the afternoon and instead met face to face Wednesday.
The Riverwalk Market in Owen Hall was filled with users of Twitter Wednesday afternoon as part of the second annual SpartanTweetUp, which connects those within the MSU community who frequently use the Web site to network. The event brought students, faculty and staff together to connect in person instead of online.
Terry Brock, a graduate student within the Department of Anthropology and member of the Campus Archaeology Program, was inspired to set up the event after realizing how much he connected with people through his four separate Twitter accounts. Brock tweets for the Department of Student Life as well as for MSU’s archaeology school, SpartanTweetup and one for personal use.
The event, Brock said, also was inspired in part by the Mid-Michigan Twitter meetup, or TweetUp, where people from all around Michigan come together every month or so to meet in person and network.
“I realized there’s a very large community of people on MSU’s campus who are all using Twitter, and also a lot of departments are using it such as the MSU Union,” he said. “I thought it’d be a great opportunity to meet the faces behind those Twitter accounts.”
Brock spoke with Kat Cooper, the marketing and sales manager for the Union who runs the Union’s Twitter account, and together they planned the first TweetUp, which happened Aug. 4. The first TweetUp was held at the MSU Dairy Store in the Union and mostly was for faculty and staff to test the outcome of a Twitter conference.
“We purposely did that one during summer so we could start slow and build on that for fall,” Cooper said.
This time, the TweetUp was held at Owen Hall so students and staff could see the newly remodeled areas of the hall and casually network.
Jake Lestan, marketing assistant for the University Activities Board and marketing senior, said he recently attended another TweetUp called the Lansing Breakfast Club and liked the atmosphere there.
“It’s about connecting with people you would have normally never met,” said Lestan, who started following Kooper’s Union Tweets to learn about happenings on campus.
Lestan said he prefers Twitter to Facebook because followers get to see what people are doing at all times of the day, he said.
Brock plans to someday organize TweetUps on campus to get the word out about particular events.
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